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by John Corey Whaley
Just when seventeen-year-old Cullen Witter thinks he understands everything about his small and painfully dull Arkansas town, it all disappears...
In the summer before Cullen's senior year, a nominally-depressed birdwatcher named John Barling thinks he spots a species of woodpecker thought to be extinct since the 1940s in Lily, Arkansas. His rediscovery of the so-called Lazarus Woodpecker sparks a flurry of press and woodpecker-mania. Soon all the kids are getting woodpecker haircuts and everyone's eating "Lazarus burgers." But as absurd as the town's carnival atmosphere has become, nothing is more startling than the realization that Cullen's sensitive, gifted fifteen-year-old brother Gabriel has suddenly and inexplicably disappeared.
While Cullen navigates his way through a summer of finding and losing love, holding his fragile family together, and muddling his way into adulthood, a young missionary in Africa, who has lost his faith, is searching for any semblance of meaning wherever he can find it. As distant as the two stories seem at the start, they are thoughtfully woven ever closer together and through masterful plotting, brought face to face in a surprising and harrowing climax.
Complex but truly extraordinary, tinged with melancholy and regret, comedy and absurdity, this novel finds wonder in the ordinary and emerges as ultimately hopeful. It's about a lot more than what Cullen calls, "that damn bird." It's about the dream of second chances.
Michael Printz Award, 2012
"Starred Review. In this darkly humorous debut, Whaley weaves two stories into a taut and well-constructed thriller…Whaley gradually brings the story's many threads together in a disturbing, heartbreaking finale that retains a touch of hope" - Publishers Weekly
"In a build-up that explores the process of grief, second chances and even the meaning of life, Cullen's and Cabot's worlds slowly intersect and solve the mystery of Gabriel's disappearance in this multilayered debut for sophisticated readers. Unexpected, thought-provoking storytelling." - Kirkus Reviews
This information about Where Things Come Back was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
John Corey Whaley grew up in a small, southern town. He has a B.A. from Louisiana Tech University, as well as an M.A in Secondary English Education. He currently teaches at a middle school in Shreveport, Louisiana. In 2008 he was a semi-finalist for the Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Award. Where Things Come Back is his first novel.
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