Excerpt from Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

At Love of Christ! children feel the Lord, and the Lord is often furious and unpredictable, so Father Arthur cowers from corrupting influences. No Walt Disney, soda pop, or women's slacks pass his threshold. The children milk goats, candle and collect eggs, preserve produce, and make yogurt from cultures they've kept alive for years. Blessed be the bacteria. The children remain ignorant of the bountiful mysteries filling the nearby Price Chopper.

Boys at Love of Christ! wear black cotton pants and solid tops from a limited palette of white, tan, or brown. The girls wear plain dresses last seen on Little House on the Prairie reruns. Simple fabric, a few pale flowers, a modest length for working. Fingernails are clean and rounded. Teeth are scrubbed with baking soda. The old ways survive, and seasonal orders dictate.

But - like the olivine-bronzite chondrite meteor that surprised a Tomhannock Creek farmer back in 1863 - corruption has a way of breaking through. New charges arrive with words from the outside: mad cow disease, La-Z-Boy recliner, Barbie doll.

"You know what Myst is?" Ruth asks Nat.

"M.I.S.T. Yes. A secretive branch of the Marines. Surprised you've heard of it." He works with more confidence than facts.

"I thought it was a video game."

"Video game? What's that?" 

Excerpted from Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt. Copyright © 2016 by Samantha Hunt. Excerpted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.