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To find out what really happened to her purportedly dead sister, sharpshooting 13-year-old Georgie Burkhardt and her sister’s one-time suitor Billy McCabe follow the trail of pigeon hunters and discover far worse going on near Placid, Wisconsin, in 1871. Georgie tells her story in a first-person narrative that rings true to the time and place. She is smart, determined, and not a little blind to the machinations of adults around her, including Billy, who has been sent by Georgie’s storekeeper grandfather to follow her and keep her safe. She does notice that Billy is well made, but this is no love story; it’s a story of acceptance, by Georgie, her family, and her small town. Timberlake weaves in the largest passenger pigeon nesting ever seen in North America, drought and fatal fires along Lake Michigan that year, a currency crisis that spawned counterfeiters, and advice on prairie travel from an actual handbook from the times. Historical fiction and mystery combine to make this a compelling adventure, and an afterword helps disentangle facts from fiction.

《尋找阿嘉莎》這本小說裡，年僅十三歲的主角喬琪親口講述故事：姊姊因自己的告密，被迫與未婚夫解除婚約，接著不告而別，後來警方找到一具疑似姊姊的屍體，眾人皆認定她已亡故，唯獨自己不信，執意外出尋找姊姊的下落，以釐清事情真相。小說依循青少年兒童文學「離家──返家」的成長故事模式，主角出外冒險，在他人陪伴下，仍獨自克服主要困境，脫胎換骨獲得心靈的成長。