Beating Heart - Hardcover

Jenkins, A. M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060546077 ISBN 13: 9780060546076

Publisher: HarperTeen, 2006

Synopsis

This house

is mine

and

I am

its beating heart.

She is a ghost: a figure glimpsed from the corner of your eye, a momentary chill, and a memory of secret kisses and hidden passion. He is 17 years old: Evan Calhoun, warm and alive, and ever since moving to this big abandoned house, he has dreamt of her. Ghost and boy fascinate each other–until her memories and his desire collide in a moment that changes them both.

Combining verse fragments with chiseled prose, A. M. Jenkins captures the compelling voice of a long–dead ghost and the perspective of a modern teen, twining mystery and romance in this evocative, sensual, and unrelentingly engrossing novel.

Ages 14+

About this title

About the Author

A. M. Jenkins is the award-winning author of Damage, Beating heart: A Ghost Story, and the Printz Honor Book Repossessed, and lives in Benbrook, Texas, with three sons, two cats, and two dogs. Jenkins received the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship for night road.

From School Library Journal

Grade 9 Up–Evan, 17, doesnt think much of his creaky, fixer-upper new home. His mom seems to be spending more time on it than she does at work or with his five-year-old sister. In addition to the three of them, the rickety house is inhabited by the ghost of Cora, a teen who lived there nearly 100 years earlier, and whose effervescent, whispery poetry makes up much of the novels text. Most of her thoughts are about Evan, how beautiful he is and how much he reminds her of a past lover. Her words are hauntingly erotic as she admires him from a distance, in his bedroom, in the bathroom while he showers. He is intrigued by her story, especially when he examines a box of her familys files and photographs found hidden in the walls of the house. She begins to appear in his dreams, causing him to question whether he truly loves his girlfriend, Carrie, with whom hes had an intimate relationship for over a year. Jenkinss novel is subtly eerie–a razor-sharp plot enfolded in a bed of feathery down, and a coming-of-age story about two teenagers–one dead, one alive–who learn that the lines between love and sex are much more blurred than they could have ever imagined.–Hillias J. Martin, New York Public Library
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About this edition

• Publisher: HarperTeen
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0060546077
• ISBN 13: 9780060546076
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 244