The Grave of God's Daughter, by Brett Ellen Block

A sad book, set in 1941 in a largely Polish community in the Allegheny Mountains.  A young nameless girl and her little brother Martin have only each other in a family living in the shadows of a brute of a husband and father, an icy and aloof wife and mother, and the Catholic Church.  There are many old and new deaths, a beloved priest, a blackmailing crone, a mentally retarded man, the priest's agoraphobic mother, a dogfight champion, and eventually the secret-protecting mother.  Block writes and carries the narrative like one of the best, but I hope she allows a little more light into her next book.