This story opens with a small family unit: Mom, Grandmom and Shelly living in a small apartment. Shelly and Grandmom have an interesting sideline of collecting ghosts in their hair and helping them find closure. Mom does not really approve, but is busy being the main source of income for the family. She does not interfere with Grandmom passing on her wisdom to her daughter.

Author Allison Mills tells the story from the point of view of Shelly, a young girl in sixth grade. She builds the relationship between Shelly and her family with love. Shelly’s difficulties at school are dealt with compassionately.

When tragedy threatens to break the family apart, Mills does a very good job of demonstrating how children deal differently with grief than what adults expect of them. Grandmom becomes the primary income earner, causing her to miss some of the pain that Shelly is dealing with. An interesting collection of characters on both sides of death help Shelly get unstuck and emerge on the other side of her grief.