Dead to You

Gr 9 Up—After being dumped in a group home, a 16-year-old boy searches for and finds his true name and family online. Ethan De Wilde was seven when he was abducted outside his home in Minnesota. His younger brother, Blake, was the only witness. Once reunited with his parents; brother; and Gracie, their "replacement child," Ethan struggles to remember anything about his life with this family and refuses to remember his time with Ellen, the woman who raised him. As Ethan adapts to a caring family and overwhelming community interest, he finds solace in a budding romantic relationship with the girl next door and a tenderly portrayed nascent bond with Gracie. Tension erupts when, spurred by complex emotions and a class project on genetics, Blake declares that his brother is a fraud. Ethan's first-person story unfolds circuitously but successfully explores the emotional devastation on those closest to an abducted child and a child's ability to cope with trauma. The long-awaited but abrupt conclusion to the story's central mystery is dramatic, packing an emotional punch and leaving plenty of questions unanswered.—Nicole Politi, The Ocean County Library, Toms River, NJ