Cushman offers a fine sense of the times with such cultural references as President Truman, Hopalong Cassidy, Montgomery Clift, Lucky Strike, “duck and cover” and the Iron Curtain.

This is not a story about the McCarthy era so much as one about how one girl-who has been trained to be quiet and obedient by her school, family, church and culture-learns to speak up for herself. When she meets Sophie Bowman and her father, she’s encouraged to think about issues in the news: the atomic bomb, peace, communism and blacklisting.

It’s 1949, and 13-year-old Francine Green lives in “the land of ‘Sit down, Francine’ and ‘Be quiet, Francine’ ” at All Saints School for Girls in Los Angeles. A serviceable but not essential offering. Alphin ( Counterfeit Son, 2000, etc.) handles the moments when Alexander moves into the ghostly world with flair and atmosphere, but the outcomes of both Rich’s quest and Alexander’s inward journey are entirely predictable. The long-dead Rich’s obsession concerns his sister: did she make it to safety before General Sherman’s troops overran the family farm? Through Rich, Alexander learns a bit about history (this history dwells on the undeniable valor of the Southern troops and the brutality of their Northern opponents, but skims very lightly over the slavery issue) and a little more about family dynamics: “Your mother left for her own reasons, not because of you.” While it’s a little unclear how this dead 19th-century teenager could have such a firm grasp of soothing 21st-century bromides, it is certain that over the course of their search for evidence of Rich’s sister’s survival, Alexander learns to accept his mother’s departure and his father’s desire to move on. The only thing that distracts him from his anger is the ghost he meets while touring a Civil War battlefield. So when his father packs the two of them up for a weeklong vacation in North Carolina to visit an attractive widow he met at a conference, Alexander moves into high resentment gear, especially when he meets her dinosaur-loving son and equally resentful older daughter. It’s been three years since his mother walked out on him and his father, but 13-year-old Alexander still hopes for her return-and blames his father bitterly for her departure. The ghost of a young Confederate soldier plays therapist to an angry 21st-century teen.

Counterfeit Son by Elaine Marie Alphin