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Annie B, as her grandmother calls her, conspires with her neglectful guardian to make sure they aren’t taken away from her, but is careless about homework and cavalier about missing school. Yet even before we get to the unrealistic parts of the plot, the characterization here is off. It doesn’t start out this way we begin with a situation that is more probable than many like to admit: an eleven year old girl and her younger brother, father dead and mother having left them, being cared for – or, not cared for, as is more often the case – by their elderly and mentally ill grandmother. Sadly, the plot is contrived and severely stretches one’s suspension of disbelief. The most kind thing I can say about it is that the prose is decent to promising. Driven by suspense and psychological intrigue, Zebra Forest deftly portrays an unfolding standoff of truth against family secrets-and offers an affecting look at two resourceful, imaginative kids as they react and adapt to the hand they've been dealt.I’ve read few books that have made me as angry as Rishe-Gewirtz’s debut novel, Zebra Forest, has. But then something shocking happens to unravel all their stories: a rattling at the back door, an escapee from the prison holding them hostage in their own home, four lives that will never be the same. Annie tells stories, too, as she and Rew laze under the birches and oaks of Zebra Forest-stories about their father the pirate, or pilot, or secret agent. That was when Gran was feeling talkative, and not brooding for days in her room-like she did after telling Annie and her little brother, Rew, the one thing they know about their father: that he was killed in a fight with an angry man who was sent away. "If you're going to do something, make sure you do it with excellence," Gran would say. When eleven-year-old Annie first started lying to her social worker, she had been taught by an expert: Gran. In an extraordinary debut novel, an escaped fugitive upends everything two siblings think they know about their family, their past, and themselves.