"Wolf Hollow" by Lauren Wolk

This award winner seems to have more detractors than fans, so I was curious.  After reading a book which starts off as "Calpurnia Tate meets Nancy Drew" I get it.  Set in western Pennsylvania in the early 1940s, the novel starts off like a simple historical fiction tale.  But then it kind of takes an odd turn.  And then another.  ***SPOILER ALERT***  First, we are introduced to a homeless vet who wanders in the area.  Our heroine, Annabelle, describes him, well, not as 12 year-old might, including one section where she speaks of his nice "smell".  Ummm.  Okay, and then we get a bully.  Except it isn't exactly a bully, but a 14 year-old sociopath in the making.  Things go dark from there.  Very dark.  All of this tried me in reading this book but the over-arching issue was that the clear goal of the author to MAKE A POINT actually didn't happen.  The novel begins with the protagonist stating that this was the year she learned to lie.  But she doesn't.  The actual story is of her trying to keep lies and not keeping them at all.  The author's afterword talks about how she admires her hero's bravery, but I'm not sure there was any significant character growth.  Annabelle seems fairly unchanged from the beginning of this journey to the end.  In the end, if there was meaning in her sitting next to a grave talking to the air, I missed it.  This, and general sloppiness (am I to believe this community in the foothills of the Appalachia mountains has moderate temperatures and gets no snow in November/December?) made this one a "fail" for me.  The only possible plus was the cover, which cleverly used the actual opening words to create a powerful image.  I can only imagine well-meaning adults selected this title for a Newbery Honor and other awards because the theme of bullying is so prevalent right now.  Unfortunately, I have never been one who felt like books with a heavy moral lesson worked for me.  For this same reason, I disliked "Fish in a Tree".  Books of this type seem to appeal to grown-ups seeking to solve problems more than readers looking for something engaging and realistic.  Sorry, folks, I'll pass.