Farm safety is paramount in Rim walkers. The ultimate tragedy of the story results from the dangerous gravity-flow wagon. Grove compares the wagon to a monster on several occasions, and she lets Eli explain the death he witnessed by gravity pulling a young boy down the chute with the grain that suffocated him. When Sara falls in the wagon, she also nearly suffocates.

Grove deals with the death of a neighbor in a sensible manner. Country folk take birth and death in stride, as it is the natural way of life on a farm. When the elderly neighbor dies, Tory and her sister attend the funeral with their grandparents. Because Tory had barely met the old man, she feels no strong bereavement, but she understands the tears of her sister, who knew him as a friend.

The search for the truth about the ghost is a...