From Kevin Brockmeier, one of this generation's most inventive young writers, comes a striking new novel about death, life, and the mysterious place in between.

 

The City is inhabited by those who have departed Earth but are still remembered by the living. They will reside in this afterlife until they are completely forgotten. But the City is shrinking, and the residents clearing out. Some of the holdouts, like Luka Sims, who

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Follows twelve-year-old Kevin Brockmeier over the course of a single school year as he sets out in search of himself: losing old friends and gaining new ones, happening into his first kiss, writing plays and stories, dressing as Dolly Parton for Halloween, booby-trapping his lunch to deter a thief. He explores the dream of his own past, recovering the person he used to be, the friends he had, the doubts he hid, the secrets he kept, the books he read...