Life isn’t easy for pre-teen Alma Neal and her widowed mother, Clara, whose measly part-time jobs sustain their hand-to-mouth existence. But Alma takes great comfort in her richly imaginative world – the books she reads, the playful short stories she writes – and longs for the day when she can be a real writer like her favourite author, RR Hawkins. When she’s offered a part-time job, transcribing letters for a reclusive old lady, the formidable Miss Lily, Alma finds herself caught up in a mystery. She becomes convinced that Miss Lily is the great RR Hawkins. She soon discovers not only the answer to her literary mystery but a meaningful friendship with a kindred spirit.

William Bell’s latest novel, Alma, is a real departure from the taut teen mysteries that he’s become best-known for, such as his CLA Book of the Year, Stones. Alma is a dreamy and gentle book that will likely engage preteen readers, particularly those bent on writing themselves. In fact, Bell has created the perfect wanna-be writer in Alma, a sensitive but plucky heroine, a little like Emily in L.M. Montgomery’s novels, who really understands the power of the written word. The friendship that Alma develops with Miss Lily and her daughter is nicely drawn and Bell is to be commended for the way that he’s encapsulated the essence of the writer’s craft into the persona of the gruff, cigarette-smoking grande dame who isn’t so much a recluse as a writer who just wants some space. The novel, sadly, has an implausible ending: we are treated to one of Alma’s supposedly published short stories, but it’s hard for readers to believe that such a novice work would be published, and this weakness undermines the power of the novel.