Ratface
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
'heart-pounding suspense' Publisher's Weekly
What do you do if an outsider tells you the teachings of Ratface and the White League are wrong? What if Ratface shuts you away behind an electric fence, or if he expects you to help him mould another child in the ways of the White League?
For Max and Christina, the White League is all they’ve ever known. But if Gillian is telling the truth, it’s time to run and hide and live by their own wits – before it’s too late.
A compelling story of escape from a way of life that has gone terribly wrong.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Readers hoping for another The Bamboo Flute, the Australian author's American debut, will not find it here. In place of the lyricism of that novel, Disher offers up a highly wrought, dystopian tale of two teenagers who escape from the clutches of a supremacist organization. Max and Christina, believing themselves orphaned, live with adoptive parents on a remote farm owned by the cultish White League. When a reporter disturbs the status quo by presenting them with unsettling facts about the cult's revered Leader, as well as the possibility that their real parents might still be alive, a crisis of confidence ensues. The balance is finally tipped when the teens' ``uncle''-a fanatical senior League official whom they dub ``Ratface''-shows up at the farm with a new child, a seven-year-old boy who has clearly been kidnapped. Max and Christina flee, determined to return their new ``brother'' to his real parents-and perhaps search for their own. Disher narrowly avoids melodrama and, while the characters, especially the adults, are stereotypical and one-dimensional, his story achieves moments of heart-pounding suspense. Ages 10-up.
