Belle Prater's Boy (1996) is a young adult novel by Ruth White that tells the story of 12-year-old Gypsy and her aunt, Belle Prater, who mysteriously disappears one morning. When Gypsy's unusual cousin Woodrow--"Belle Prater's boy—comes to town, she quickly befriends him in the hopes that she'll find out more about his mother's disappearance. The novel is set in 1950s Western Virginia. Belle Prater's Boy was named a Newbery Honor book in 1997, and a 1996 Boston Globe - Horn Book Awards Honor Book for Fiction