Abilene jumps off the moving train early to observe Manifest before anyone can form an impression of her.

Abilene finds a hidden cigar box full of old letters and small mementos under her bedroom floorboard.

The girls follow Mr. Underhill to the cemetery and return to find a threatening note nailed to the treehouse.

Abilene breaks Miss Sadie's pot while trying to retrieve her compass and agrees to work off the debt.

Abilene gives Ned's letter to Miss Sadie, who enters a trance and begins telling the story of Jinx and Ned.

Miss Sadie tells how a runaway named Jinx jumped off a train, met Ned at a creek, and settled in Manifest.

Miss Sadie tells how Ned enlists in the military on New Year's Day, using fireworks money to bribe the officer.

Miss Sadie tells how the townspeople fake a Spanish Influenza outbreak to drive Devlin's enforcers out of Manifest for a month.

Fred Macke tricks Lester Burton into bidding on a public spring, giving the town back taxes to fund the land purchase.

Shady buys Widow Cane's land for the town of Manifest at auction, ending Devlin's leverage over the workers.

Finn corners Jinx at gunpoint during the homecoming party but steps into a raccoon trap and is killed.

An army truck delivers a letter to the homecoming celebration confirming that Ned Gillen was killed in action.

Abilene proposes the Remember When writing contest to identify the author of the treehouse note by matching handwriting.

Abilene clears leaves from a cemetery tombstone and reads the name Gideon Tucker engraved on the stone.

Abilene sends a false lumbago telegram and reunites with her father Gideon walking toward her on the railroad tracks.

Twelve-year-old Abilene Tucker arrives in Manifest, Kansas, after being sent away by her father during the Great Depression and quickly uncovers a box of mysterious mementos and letters hidden under her floorboard. With new friends Lettie and Ruthanne, she investigates a local spy called the Rattler while listening to Miss Sadie tell stories about two boys from 1917 named Jinx and Ned whose schemes shaped the town's history. The stories reveal how Manifest's immigrant community faked a Spanish Influenza epidemic, outmaneuvered mine owner Devlin in a land auction, and briefly triumphed — before tragedy struck when Ned was killed in the war and a man named Finn met his end in the woods. Back in 1936, Abilene organizes a Remember When writing contest, then makes a shattering discovery in the cemetery that finally explains why her father sent her away. She lures Gideon back to Manifest with a false telegram and reunites with him on the railroad tracks, both of them finally home.

Abilene's journey from arrival in Manifest to reunion with her father.

Sister Redempta gives Abilene a summer writing assignment due September 1 on her first and only day of school.

Shady tells Abilene he knew both Ned and Jinx personally after she shares what she heard from Miss Sadie.

Jinx and Ned escape a Ku Klux Klan rally by stealing robes, then replace the Klansmen's toilet paper with poison ivy.

Jinx tells Ned how his uncle Finn framed him for the murder of Junior Haskell after a Joplin revival.

Jinx and Ned build and sell replica fireworks, but their product accidentally causes the water tower to explode at the New Year's party.

Mrs. Larkin refuses Miss Sadie's square for the victory quilt, and Miss Sadie responds with a Romani curse.

Sheriff Dean visits Shady to collect bootleg liquor and reveals that investigators searching for Joplin killers are near Manifest.

Hadley Gillen calls a community meeting at Shady's bar after Widow Cane dies and Devlin moves to claim her land.

Abilene and the girls find Sister Redempta helping deliver a difficult baby at the Clayton house during a frog-hunting trip.

Lester Burton attempts to inspect the quarantined town but is driven away by the smell of a dead pig in a coffin.

Abilene, Ruthanne, and Lettie sneak into the school building and find a student's Ode to the Rattler hidden under a desk.

The Remember When contest submissions arrive, and the girls match the treehouse note's handwriting to Mr. Underhill the undertaker.

Shady tells Abilene that Jinx left Manifest the night of the homecoming party and that the real influenza soon killed many residents.

Miss Sadie reveals she is the Hungarian woman from her own stories, separated from her young son Benedek at Ellis Island.

The town revives with a second homecoming celebration, and Ivan DeVore finally invites Velma to attend after years of anonymous notes.

The secondary events of Moon Over Manifest fill in the richly detailed world of Manifest across both timelines, revealing the texture of life during the Great Depression and World War I. Abilene receives a summer assignment, bonds with the townspeople, and pursues the Rattler mystery while learning how the town's immigrant community formed unlikely alliances against Devlin's mine. In the past, Jinx and Ned pull dangerous pranks on the Klan, Jinx confesses the dark truth about his uncle Finn, and their fireworks scheme brings both profit and chaos to the New Year's celebration. The townspeople's resistance is built on bonds forged across ethnic lines, culminating in Burton's humiliating defeat at the land auction through a cleverly staged con. By the story's end, Miss Sadie's true identity as Ned's mother is revealed, the town heals through shared memory, and new beginnings emerge as Manifest steps out of its long silence.

The hidden details and community stories behind Manifest's past and present.

Abilene recognizes the name Hattie Mae Harper on the newspaper wrapped around her father's compass before ever arriving in Manifest.

Abilene overhears Hattie Mae tell Shady that Abilene needs to know something, but neither adult explains what they mean.

Lester Burton posts a notice targeting German and Austrian miners as suspected spies and forces Ned into a punishing double shift.

Jinx hides inside the hollow bar panel as Sheriff Dean collects illegal liquor and casually reveals that Joplin investigators are nearby.

Abilene passes a slow-moving train but chooses not to jump on, deciding to stay in Manifest rather than keep drifting.

Jinx proposes the fake influenza epidemic plan before the gathered immigrants at Shady's bar, and the townspeople agree to participate.

The townspeople secretly combine their bootleg elixir with alcohol in a church baptistry as immigrants from many nations toast together.

Abilene looks up manifest in a dictionary and discovers it means both a ship's passenger list and to reveal or make known.

Shady lets Sheriff Dean confiscate jugs secretly filled mostly with prune juice, then laughs as the sheriff walks away.

Sheriff Nagelman arrives from Joplin at the homecoming party searching for the pair of men suspected in Junior Haskell's murder.

Abilene breaks down crying and tells Miss Sadie that Jinx could not be dead because she believes he is her father.

Abilene uses the skeleton key from the mementos box to unlock Miss Sadie's garden shed and finds a box of Ned's keepsakes.

Abilene lances and cleans Miss Sadie's festering infected leg, and Miss Sadie accepts the help without resistance for the first time.

Abilene finds a library checkout card taped inside a stolen copy of Moby Dick bearing both Ned Gillen's and Gideon Tucker's names.

Gideon tells Abilene the Rattler was never a spy, and she deduces the rattling sound came from Sister Redempta's rosary beads.

Moon Over Manifest is structured around a series of pivotal moments where hidden truths surface and characters are forced into defining choices. Abilene's summer in Manifest is punctuated by small but significant decisions — like choosing to stay rather than jump onto a passing train — that signal her growing sense of belonging to a place for the first time. In the past, Jinx's schemes escalate from small cons to organizing an entire community's resistance, while Miss Sadie silently bears the weight of secrets that span two continents and decades. The story's emotional climax builds as Abilene tells Miss Sadie that Jinx must be her father, opens the locked shed with the skeleton key, and finally cleans the wound that Miss Sadie has refused to let anyone touch. Each revelation — the meaning of the word manifest, the checkout card hidden in a stolen library book, and the identity of the Rattler — draws Abilene to the full truth about who she is and where she belongs.