The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mothers Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents yard. Twelve years later Robins murder is still unsolved and his family remains devastated. So it is that Robins sister Harrietunnervingly bright, insufferably determined, and unduly influenced by the fiction of Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson–sets out to unmask his killer. Aided only by her worshipful friend Hely, Harriet crosses her towns rigid lines of race and caste and burrows deep into her familys history of loss.

Filled with hairpin turns of plot and a bustling, ridiculous humanity worthy of Dickens (The New York Times Book Review), The Little Friend is a work of myriad enchantments by a writer of prodigious talent.