"Wingshooters" is heavy-handed at times, but the depiction of a relationship between a 9-year-old mixed-race girl (Japanese mother, American father) and her grandfather saves the day easily.

There are other novels out there whose stories center around a child's growing realization of the intricacies and malignant power of racism ("To Kill a Mockingbird," anyone?) and Revoyr, whose works I'd never read before, certainly goes for it in a bid to join the club. She mostly succeeds.

Michelle LeBeau's father and mother are out of the picture (he's supposedly trying to find her), so the girl lives with her grandparents in small-town, whiter-than-white Deerhorn, Wis. Michelle — "Mike," as her grandfather Charlie calls her — has grown accustomed to the verbal and sometimes physical cruelty of other children in 1974 Wisconsin. Telling the tale as a woman in 2011, Michelle recounts the events that drew the town's eyes from her differentness: the arrival of a young black couple, male schoolteacher and female nurse. Bigoted Charlie frowns on his son's marriage choice but loves Michelle as his own. But the arrival of the black couple pushes his scant tolerance too far and enrages others in Deerhorn, particularly one of his friends.

Now, perhaps I'm naive, but the almost across-the-board intolerance of the Garretts and virulent racism seems over the top for 1974 American Midwest. Revoyr simply doesn't try very hard to show that not everyone has a dark heart. Surely a few people besides this little girl see how wrong it is. No? Isn't there an Atticus Finch in this damn burg?

Revoyr hits the bull's eye with the grandchild/grandfather relationship, however. Yes, Charlie teaches her to hunt, dotes on her, not seeing how incongruous it is to adore this girl in her difference but to resent the obviously kind black newcomers.

The Garretts, not standing by while an obvious wrong is being done, are involved in an accusation against Charlie's most-racist friend, setting Michelle's and the town's worlds spinning off course.

Again, Revoyr at times overplays her hand. Would Charlie really have allowed Michelle to accompany him on what's obviously a potentially dangerous confrontation? Revoyr says here, yes, because as the storyteller she needs to be there. And would even a racist man say, in 1974, referring to a black man: "No sign of the buck?"?

But the story at its heart is about the girl and her grandfather, and Revoyr, who writes well, makes it moving and worthwhile.