[In the following review, Schwartz praises Phillips's Shelter and calls the character of Carmody “[t]he one weakness in the book.”]

The outside world penetrates Camp Shelter only in the thoughts and memories of the characters. To the Swenson sisters, the outside world is a treacherous one: their parents are alternately distant and close—abusively close. The sisters lead very separate lives at home: each allied with a different parent, and keeping their secrets locked deep in their hearts. Yet the sisterly bond is stronger than they realize: when Lenny and other girls are physically threatened by a violent neighbor, she instinctively cries out to Alma to run from the danger.

Protection by sisters and friends is one of the novel's predominant themes. Cap has been Lenny's best friend since they were 10 years old; they are as close as sisters. Jealous Cap even gently scolds Lenny when Lenny reveals that she has dreamed about Alma—not Cap. Twelve-year-old Alma is very protective of her best friend, Delia, since Delia's father recently drowned in a probable suicide. Alma is so watchful of Delia that she sneaks into Delia's bed at night to prevent her from sleepwalking. Despite these close friendships, each sister keeps an important secret: Lenny does not tell Cap of the strange memories of her father that surface along with her growing sexual curiosity, nor does Alma confess to anyone that she knew their mother was having an affair with Delia's father.

In Lenny and Cap's relationship, Phillips frankly depicts the sexual inquisitiveness of adolescence. When the two encounter the camp's male bugler fishing at Turtle Hole, a pivotal nearby pond, their sexual curiosity reaches its peak in an astonishing scene: Lenny and the bugler explore each other while Cap swims in the water, “touching them both, circling round them, her mouth on his neck, his ears, as though she were whispering.” Unbeknownst to them, Parson is watching from his shack and he becomes intrigued by Lenny. Later, they too will feel the magnetic pull of sensuality at the water's edge.

The woods, streams, and mountains in and around Camp Shelter are a strong and immutable presence in the book, and nature ultimately provides the children with the protection they need most. Phillips has an unerring touch in describing natural scenes: one can almost feel the noonday heat and hear the summer rainstorms: “The night is truly dark but awash in shadows even through the rain; there's no moonlight, no lightning, no thunder, only the sky split open, falling down driven and polished.” Phillips uses water imagery to evoke the heavy summer atmosphere of Appalachia, as well as the thoughts and visions of the characters. They often dream of swimming and floating: Parson dreams nightly of a fish-girl and believes he has found her in Lenny.

Buddy and Parson balance the duos of female friends. Quiet, watchful Buddy takes a simple joy in nature and shows an assurance of his place in it: “Now when he was bounding down the mountain, taking the steep grades so fast he didn't have to think where to put his feet, how to grab branches and direct his slide … he flew and the earth fell away beneath him.” He and Parson are linked together by their mutual hatred of Buddy's brutish stepfather, Carmody, home from prison, who gets drunk, forces himself on his wife, and emotionally and sexually abuses Buddy. Parson, Carmody's former prison cellmate, has followed Carmody to West Virginia, believing him to be an evil—“a pit the Devil had filled, a pit to drown whatever touched him”—that must be stopped. Parson's attempts to shield Buddy from Carmody mirror the protective friendships of the girls.

The one weakness in the book is Carmody. He embodies sheer devilry; there is no explanation (other than his briefly described terrible childhood) for what moves him to hurt others in fulfillment of his desires. The simplicity of his baseness stands in stark comparison to the richness of the other characters, and to the book's minute examinations of events and memories. It conveys the idea that evil is simple and unmotivated, an unsophisticated concept that mars the complex moral universe of trust and protection Phillips has created. Carmody's trespasses at Turtle Hole are the fulcrum of the plot; this is too great a load for a shallow character to bear in such a dense, psychological novel.

The climactic event at Turtle Hole, with its shocking violence, brings a welcome emotional catharsis. Phillips meshes watery imagery with her themes of protection from abuse and danger, the bonds of sisterhood and friendship, and the power of nature. The characters come to Turtle Hole for different reasons, but amidst its waters they jointly discover danger, death, and finally, release. The entire book glows with an astounding lyricism and a penetrating wisdom into the world of childhood, a place commonly associated with innocence and trust, but one that is rife with unspoken longing and secret wisdom. Phillips draws a layer of protection around her characters: the shelter of the title becomes real as five children draw together to bury the violence they have unwittingly been drawn into.