Author Description

Thirteen-year-old Nat moves with his family to the small town of Mosspond promising to detest their new home. Only when he stumbles across the trail of a strange, ghostly boy in town does the future look brighter. The boy, Jude, is frightening yet intriguing in his cold silence. Nat is immediately drawn to this classmate despite the aura of disquiet surrounding him. One afternoon, he discovers Jude playing the piano in the school music room, and the sound of it is, as Nat describes, "bitterly moving... such profound beauty-such wretched beauty." While listening, Nat is swept into deep pits of loneliness and emptiness and is unable to comprehend the reason for pulling such emotion from the music. After some guessing, he comes to the conclusion that Jude is ill in a sense that cannot be physically explained and sets off on a quest to find the cure for the tormented boy. What Nat discovers as the answers shimmer closer forces him to search inward, no matter the pain of the experience.