Otherwood
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What happened in the woods that day? Pete Hautman's riveting middle-grade novel touches on secrets and mysteries -- and the power of connections with family and friends.
"Hatred combined with lies and secrets can break the world." Grandpa Zach used to say that before he died, but Stuey never really knew what he meant. It was kind of like how he used to talk about quantum physics or how he used to say ghosts haunted their overgrown golf course. But then one day, after Stuey and his best friend, Elly Rose, spend countless afternoons in the deadfall in the middle of the woods, something totally unbelievable happens. As Stuey and Elly Rose struggle to come to grips with their lives after that reality-splitting moment, all the things Grandpa Zach used to say start to make a lot more sense. This is a book about memory and loss and the destructive nature of secrets, but also about the way friendship, truth, and perseverance have the ability to knit a torn-apart world back together.
Pete Hautman
Pete Hautman (b. 1952) is an American novelist. Born in Berkeley, California, Hautman moved to Minnesota when he was six. He attended college at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the University of Minnesota, and went on to work in marketing and graphic design. Dissatisfied with his work, Hautman turned to fiction, writing his first novel, Drawing Dead, in 1993. A rollicking story of an ex-cop whose gambling gets him into trouble, it was the first of five novels starring Joe Crow, Sam O'Gara, and Axel Speeter. Besides writing mysteries, Hautman has had success writing young adult and middle school fiction. In 2004, he won the National Book Award for Godless, a young adult novel about a pair of teens who start a religion based on worshipping a local water tower. Hautman’s recent novels include Blank Confession (2010), The Big Crunch (2011), and What Boys Really Want (2012).
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