Revolver - Hardcover

Sedgwick, Marcus

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1596435925 ISBN 13: 9781596435926

Publisher: Roaring Brook Press, 2010

Synopsis

A LOADED GUN. STOLEN GOLD. And a menacing stranger. A taut frontier survivor story, set at the time of the Alaska gold rush.

In an isolated cabin, fourteen-year-old Sig is alone with a corpse: his father, who has fallen through the ice and frozen to death only hours earlier. Then comes a stranger claiming that Sig's father owes him a share of a horde of stolen gold. Sig's only protection is a loaded Colt revolver hidden in the cabin's storeroom. The question is, will Sig use the gun, and why?

Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick is a 2011 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

This title has Common Core connections.

About this title

About the Author

MARCUS SEDGWICK is the author of ten previous novels for young readers and has been short-listed for numerous children's book awards, including the Carnegie Medal, The Guardian Prize, and the Edgar Allan Poe Award. He lives in Sussex, England.

Reviews

Starred Review. Grade 7 Up—In 1910, in a lonely cabin 100 miles north of the Arctic circle, Sig Andersson sits alone with his father's body while his sister and stepmother go for help. A sled crossing on thin ice had proved foolhardy for Einar, an otherwise prudent man, and his son found him half-submerged in icy water, frozen to death. When a menacing stranger bangs on the door, claiming to be Einar Andersson's ex-business partner, Sig wrestles with the possibility that his father had cheated prospectors out of gold in his position as Assay Clerk. As Sig is held captive by the pistol-toting Gunther Wolff, the story flashes back, in short glimpses, to events leading up to this day. Sig relives the mystery surrounding the death of his beloved mother when he was very young and his father's lessons about God and respecting the power of a gun. The tension escalates as the teen calculates his chances of retrieving his father's hidden revolver or escaping from the bearlike intruder, all the while worrying about the return of his unsuspecting sister. The bleak setting and ominous circumstances will draw immediate comparisons to a Jack London tale, but in a more accessible, spare style. Reluctant readers will be riveted by the suspense and the short chapters. Scenes dealing with brutality or the harsh realities of death may not be for sensitive readers but the satisfying ending will dispel some of the gloomy tone. A great addition to survival/adventure collections.—Vicki Reutter, Cazenovia High School, NY
(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Sedgwick’s historical mystery, set in the Arctic Circle in 1899 and 1910, makes good use of the word chilling. Outside their remote Scandinavian village, Sig’s father dies of exposure after trying to rush home across a frozen lake. The reason for his carelessness becomes apparent to Sig when a hulking beast of a man arrives at their tiny shack with a Colt revolver, demanding his share of a stolen wealth of gold. But Sig has his own Colt hidden in the storeroom, and some very pressing questions. Who is this brute at the door? Is there really a hidden treasure? And, most importantly, can he bring himself to use that revolver to save himself and his family? As the claustrophobic tension in the Arctic cabin mounts, Sedgwick doles out bits of backstory set a decade earlier in the Alaska gold rush, and the climax reveals that there hasn’t been a single superfluous detail in the intricate, freezer-burn buildup. A carefully crafted story effectively rigidified by taut plotting and the crystalline atmospherics of its isolated setting. Grades 7-10. --Ian Chipman

Edition details

• Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1596435925
• ISBN 13: 9781596435926
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224