When her mother and her stepfather did not come home for dinner, Sandy had a sense of foreboding. But her mother had been late before, so Sandy hid her fears from her two younger sisters. Only later, getting up in the middle of the night and finding that her mother's clothes were gone, did she admit the horrible truth-they had been abandoned. Readers will be caught up in thirteen-year-old Sandy's attempt to shield her sisters from knowledge of the desertion and to keep them all together on their run-down, debt-ridden farm. She deceives the neighbors by inventing a sick aunt whom their mother is supposed to be visiting, earns small sums by doing odd jobs, and faces crises, big and small, with occasional help from her only friend, Joe. Her hard test of self-reliance comes at a time in her life when she is undergoing changes she longs to explore and think about-a time, too, when the mystery and thrill of first love unexpectedly come to her. Sandy's story is also one of life on an American farm hovering on the brink of poverty. "Under the Haystack" is a novel rich in family warmth, humor and sadness. Sandy, courageous and believable as she stand in uncertainty on the threshold of womanhood while trying to hold her family together, is a girl with whom readers can readily identify.