The Prophet of Yonwood by Jean DuPrau

Gender: Children's Literature

Setting: On earth, in the not to distant future.

First Sentence: On a warm July afternoon, a woman in the town of Yonwood North Carolina, a woman named Althea Tower went out to her back yard to fill the bird feeder.

This novel is the third in the author's "Books of Ember" series.

This novel is a prequel. the action takes place years before the City of Ember was sealed.

This story follows Nickie Randolph.  She is a young girl who is exploring the small town of Yonwood.  Many years in the future, she will be among the colonists who move into Ember in order to preserve a group of people from the ravages of an oncoming war.

But for now, Nickie is learning about how people get along with each other.  Yonwood is the home of Althea Towner.  She is an old woman who has been having visions of the future.

She communicates with the outside world through a woman named Brenda Beeson.  Since Althea is not very coherent, Brenda tries to interpret her utterances. This leads to a string of odd pronouncements. In the end, Nickie discovers the truth of Althea and her visions.

Throughout the book, there are a few hints about the future and inter-dimensional travel.  But these are few, and don't really affect the  story.

This book is pretty much a stand alone novel.  None of the hints about the future are vital to understanding the story.  And Ember itself is not introduced until the last pages of the book.

An OK story.  But for me, a disappointment.