A Man With An Agenda

Josh's mom and stepfather recently moved, but he's begun to adjust. He plans on making new friends and settling in during summer vacation, and has already earned a place on the baseball team. Unfortunately, his parents will both be away for work this summer - jobs that are sorely needed - so instead of baseball, Josh is forced to stay with his stepfather's Great-Aunt Ethel in some backwater town for the summer. Spending time in a treehouse, he runs into the ghost of a coal miner named Willie who has a very specific favor to ask....

This is your classic shipped off to the boonies for the summer story, but Kehret elevates it by giving the characters depth and focusing on small details to ground the work. 'Ghost's Grave' is a ghost story with a bank-robbery subplot, but it doesn't skimp on the relationships between the characters. This reminded me of 'Ghost Cat' in that a book that very easily could have been hokey and silly, turned into something memorable instead. I loved these kind of stories growing up.