The Absence of Sparrows
-
- $7.99
-
- $7.99
Publisher Description
Stranger Things meets The Stand in this haunting coming-of-age novel about a plague that brings the world to a halt -- and the boy who believes that his town's missing sparrows can save his family.
In the small town of Griever's Mill, eleven-year-old Ben Cameron is expecting to finish off his summer of relaxing and bird-watching without a hitch. But everything goes wrong when dark clouds roll in.
Old Man Crandall is the first to change -- human one minute and a glass statue the next. Soon it's happening across the world. Dark clouds fill the sky and, at random, people are turned into frozen versions of themselves. There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and no one knows how to stop it.
With his mom on the verge of a breakdown, and his brother intent on following the dubious plans put forth by a nameless voice on the radio, Ben must hold out hope that his town's missing sparrows will return with everyone's souls before the glass plague takes them away forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In their community of Griever's Mill, Ben Cameron, 11, and his brother Pete, 12, witness the first "darkening," a storm that looks "like coal smoke, the kind you'd see billowing out from a locomotive, all thick and dark woolen gray." The darkness leaves behind a single victim, local grocer George Crandall, who is turned into an obsidian glass statue, just like hundreds of people across the country. Kirchmeier's debut novel focuses on two brothers' very different attempts to try to save their family and the world from horrific events. While Ben focuses on the birds in the backyard, tracking their comings and goings to determine if his theory that they are guiding souls back to their glass-ified bodies is correct, Pete becomes more obsessed with the voice on the radio claiming that the only way to end the darkness is by shattering all the glass-ified people. Creepy and engaging, Kirchmeier's story delves into sibling relationships, mental health, and survival. Ben grapples with bullies, the loss of a parent, and questions about faith and the afterlife, and Kirchmeier uses the character's increasingly anxious voice to effectively toe the line of real-world horrors and fantastical terrors. Ages 8 12.
