I just finished Asta in the Wings by Jan Elizabeth Watson. It is a marvelous book, set in 1979 in a rural community in Maine. Asta lives with her brother, Orion and mother in house isolated from other people because Asta's mother convinces the children that there is plague all around them.
Asta and her brother finally venture out of the house when their mother does not return one night and she is amazed and yet matter-of-fact as she finds the world is different than the one had been led to believe in.
This wonderful book is Watson's first novel and it conveys the love of Asta for her mother and brother even though their lives together were anything but safe and normal.