This page-turning debut involves a three-pronged mystery as steeped in Southern culture as a pitcher of sweet tea--and just as refreshing.
Eleven-year-old narrator Moses "Mo" LoBeau loves her life in Tupelo Landing, N.C., with the Colonel and Miss Lana, where she helps to run the Colonel's café. But she does wonder how she came to be rescued by the Colonel, as a baby floating down the river in a hurricane (hence her name). And the Colonel likewise has no recollection of anything before that night. But Mo, the Colonel and Miss Lana make a family, and with a best friend like Dale, Mo needs little more. She considers herself "three times lucky" for surviving the hurricane, for the Colonel snatching her from the flood, and for Miss Lana taking her in "like [Mo] was her own." But that doesn't stop Mo from sending out messages in a bottle to her unknown "Upstream Mother" in hopes of discovering her identity.
One day, the Colonel returns from a trip with a '58 "Underbird" (as Mo calls it, due to the missing "Th" on the front), and soon after, a stranger named Detective Joe Starr strolls into the café searching for clues to a murder case in Winston-Salem. Next, Mr. Jesse, a regular at the Colonel's café, turns up dead. The mysteries may drive the plot, but Mo's friendship with Dale and her bond to her foster family form the backbone of the novel. Sure to be a hit with middle-graders. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness