The Ash House
-
- $10.99
Publisher Description
An unsettling, gripping middle grade debut about searching for a sense of belonging in the wrong places, and the bravery it takes to defy those who seek to control us. This is Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children meets Lord of the Flies for fans of Neil Gaiman and Holly Black.When Eleven-year-old Sol arrives at the Ash House, desperate for a cure for his complex pain syndrome, he finds a community of strange children long abandoned by their mysterious Headmaster.The children at the Ash House want the new boy to love their home as much as they do. They give him a name like theirs. They show him the dorms and tell him about the wonderful oasis that the Headmaster has created for them. But the new boy already has a name. Doesn't he? At least he did before he walked through those gates...This was supposed to be a healing refuge for children like him. Something between a school and a summer camp. With kids like him. With pain like his. But no one is allowed to get sick at the Ash House. NO ONE.And then The Doctor arrives...Strange things are about to happen at the mysterious Ash House. And the longer Sol spends on the mysterious grounds, the more he begins to forget who he is, the more the other children begin to distrust him, and the worse his pain becomes. But can he hold onto reality long enough to find an escape? And better yet, can he convince the others?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Debut author Walker spins a tense tale of abuse and neglect that centers on a brown-skinned foster child's arrival at an imposing, smoke-drenched mansion made of ash. After being sent from a hospital to the Ash House, a boy dubbed Solitude, who experiences back pain and seizures, struggles to fit in with the institution's other children. The kids live on their own in service of rigid, moralistic "Nicenesses" taking on virtuous names such as Freedom, educating themselves using prerecorded lectures, maintaining the grounds, and tethering their lives to an unbreakable "web of habits and rules" while longing for their absent Headmaster and dreading the cold and pitiless Doctor's reappearance. Sol bristles at the others' inflexibility, resulting in acrimony and accusations of "nastiness," but when the Doctor returns and Sol is the subject of a medical procedure gone awry, a brutal act with which the group has some experience, he must persuade his reluctant new acquaintances to escape, braving birdlike drones and lantern-eyed creatures en route to the outside world. Simultaneously bleak, moving, and unsettling, Walker's immersive story slowly reveals its secrets, using tension as a lever to tip the reader deep into the Ash House's mysteries. Ages 8 12.
