From My Cold Young Fingers - Advance Reading Copy

Trapped! Could young Nate ever get past the trauma of his own death and move on to Heaven? Or should he return to Earth and try again? 1940's coastal Maine was not an easy place, and it was especially brutal for Nate's father, a banker and a flatlander who had moved north to begin pulling lobsters from the Maine coast. Barely getting by, the relocated family struggled to survive. But they were hated by the locals, and that hate soon turned to violence. Now, traumatized by the violent murders of his parents and himself, nine-year-old Nate finds himself somewhere between Heaven and Earth, a place where dead relatives can come and go, but a place where he is stuck. Desperately missing his real life, but too frightened to go back to Earth, Nate spends decades in this half-world where other luckier souls blink in and out within hours or days at most. From his unique perch, Nate watches in horror as his surviving younger sister tries to cope with their family's brutal past. Who is worse off, the sibling above or the sibling below? Either way, it seems that violence and tragedy are to follow them no matter what their paths.