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Summary
Summary
There are things the people of Winter, Wisconsin, would rather forget. The year the Nazis came to town, for one. That fire, for another. But what they'd really like to forget is Christian Cage.Seventeen-year-old Christian's parents disappeared when he was a little boy. Ever since, he's drawn obsessively: his mother's face...her eyes...and what he calls "the sideways place," where he says his parents are trapped. Christian figures if he can just see through his mother's eyes, maybe he can get there somehow and save them. But Christian also draws other things. Ugly things. Evil things. Dark things. Things like other people's fears and nightmares. Their pasts. Their destiny. There's one more thing the people of Winter would like to forget: murder.But Winter won't be able to forget the truth, no matter how hard it tries. Not as long as Christian draws the dark...
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Christian Cage, 17, is a gifted artist and the dark curiosity his small town community would like to ignore. Christian's parents disappeaedr when he was young. Then, one of his elementary school teachers nearly committed suicide, pointing a finger at Christian in her note, and there was the death of Christian's aunt. Death seems to follow the boy, and the residents of Winter, Wisconsin, don't even know half the story about the true darkness that inhabits Christian's drawings. When the teenager defaces a prominent citizen's barn with Nazi symbols, he comes into the spotlight again and is sentenced to community service and therapy. Working at the local rest home, Christian finds himself suddenly dropping into the memories of Winter's last surviving Jewish resident. As he researches David's past, Christian discovers covered up murders, hate crimes, and the year that Nazi war prisoners came to Winter. Joshua Swanson infuses Christian's narrative with just the right amounts of self-doubt, obsessive behavior, and confusion. As Christian delves deeper into the dark history of his town and faces his own demons, Swanson draws listeners easily into the suspenseful tale. Ilse J. Bick's intriguing book (Carolrhoda, 2010) may spark listeners to do more research into the years following World War II and the prisoners' experiences in America.-Jessica Miller, West Springfield Public Library, MA (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Seventeen-year-old Christian is a loner at school-which is what tends to happen when you live in a small town with a hidden history, your parents have disappeared, you hear voices in your head from "the sideways place," and you can draw people to death. Sometimes Christian's drawings are taken over by the thoughts of those around him, and when he draws their deepest fears, they die. But now something new is happening: Christian is falling into the life of an eight-year-old boy who lived during the 1940s when Winter, Wis., was home to German WWII prisoners who performed labor in town. The boy witnessed an atrocious crime, and Christian gets caught up in the mystery he uncovers. Though the story is at times hard to follow, as Christian moves in and out of his life and tries to understand his connection to the mysterious "sideways place" that plays a pivotal role in the story's climax, Bick builds the gripping supernatural/historical mystery to a satisfying conclusion that demonstrates the evils of the present can be just as terrifying as those of the past. Ages 12-18. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Christian is able to draw images from the minds of others--who then tend to die. His attempt to understand this power leads to an exhumation of the town's dark past, involving German prisoners of war, the town's last surviving Jew, and a murder. This cold-case-meets-magical-realism narrative is a suspenseful tale and a critical examination of how history is written. (c) Copyright 2011. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
(Mystery. YA)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Packed with enough ideas to fuel two or three books, Bick's ambitious, intelligent, and relentlessly dark novel is a notable achievement, even if it (understandably) wavers beneath its own weight. Seventeen-year-old Christian is a painter who is developing some disturbing talents: he can paint others' thoughts and memories, perhaps even influencing their actions. He is also having some vivid dreams in which he inhabits the body of a child in the 1940s, watching as a town business leader uses German POWs as laborers. Christian awakes from one of these fugues to find himself blamed for painting swastikas on a barn, a terrible event that results in two fortuitous meetings: a dying old man in a nursing home with a connection to Christian's dreams and a friendly psychiatrist who becomes his chief confidant. And that's just the tip of the iceberg: psychotic bullies, deformed babies, sex scandals you almost need to take notes to keep up. Interest levels might fluctuate across overlong scenes, but patient readers will be well rewarded. Gut-punch of an ending, too.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2010 Booklist
