A Gathering of Shades
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
Between the worlds of life and death...
Sixteen-year-old Aidan's grandmother has a secret recipe. She feeds ghosts. Her nightly ritual keeps the local lost souls lingering, caught between life and death. When Aidan stumbles upon this knowledge in the wake of his own father's death, the revelation shakes him to the core. Grief-stricken, he is dangerously drawn into the strange and wondrous world of the dead—and away from the living people who love him.
Set in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, this beautifully crafted tale of love and loss is told in shades of otherworldly mystery. David Stahler Jr. spins a chilling story that delves into the depths of grief and emerges as a shimmering celebration of life.
Critical Praise for A Gathering of Shades:
“Stahler fashions the intricate plot very carefully. . . . The fully realized characters—both teens and adults alike—raise this above the formulaic and closer to magical realism.”
—Kirkus
“The sinister atmosphere of the story is finely constructed, from the opening scenes to the final pages. . . . The audience for supernatural suspense fiction will drink this new novel right up.”
—The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
“Stahler’s eloquence on grief and yearning, combined with a vision of ghosts refreshingly distinct . . . , will exert a powerful hold on many teens’ imaginations.”
—Booklist
“Aidan is almost lost in the world of the dead, but Stahler is able to deftly help his character take his tentative first steps toward living in the present again. . . . Suggest this one to readers of Naylor’s Jade Green.”
—VOYA
“Stahler delivers a stirring story of pain, love and loss between three generations of a family living in rural Vermont. . . . A painful, yet ultimately uplifting and rewarding portrait of loved ones holding together through the most difficult of times.”
—Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Stahler (Truesight) delivers a stirring story of pain, love and loss between three generations of a family living in rural Vermont. After 16-year-old Aidan loses his father in a traffic accident, his mother decides to move the two of them from Boston to an area of northern Vermont called the Kingdom, where she and his father grew up. They move in with his maternal grandmother, called Memere because of her French-Canadian roots, in the hometown his father referred to as "a squalid backwater." Aidan, relegated to helping his Uncle Donny with farm work, is miserable until he spies on his grandmother and discovers that she communicates with ghosts. The ghosts gather each night in the orchard to sip a bit of Memere's blood that she mixes with water in a bowl (a trick she picked up from Homer's The Odyssey). Meanwhile, Aidan is certain he glimpses his father in the surrounding forests and fields. As his quest to contact his father consumes him, Aidan doesn't notice his mother languishing in a deepening depression and he ignores Memere's cautions about the dangers involved: "If you really want to say good-bye to your father, then you'll stop chasing him all over this christly mountain. Until you do, you'll have no peace and neither will he." Stahler keenly explores the tangle of emotions Aidan and his family feel over his father's death. It's a painful, yet ultimately uplifting and rewarding portrait of loved ones holding together through the most difficult of times. Ages 14-up.
