Bone Gap Review - Fraer

Terrie

Book Review for - Bone Gap      2-3-16

Plot Summary-

In small, cornfield covered Bone Gap, people can disappear. Finn O’Sullivan and his brother, Sean, know their mother left by choice. Sean, heartbroken, believes the beautiful and mysterious Roza did the same. Finn knows, but can’t convince anyone else, that she was abducted by the tall man in the black SUV “who moves like a cornstalk in the wind.”  Finn, bullied for his oddities, and eccentric, beekeeping Petey (Priscilla), find love as a black stallion takes them for nightly rides through the fields that are there, and places that aren’t.  Bolstered by Petey, Finn’s growing belief in himself leads him into one of those unreal places where he must battle the tall man to save Roza and bring her back home.

Analysis

      Author Laura Ruby brings Greek mythology to life in Bone Gap. Persephone-like botany student, Roza, is taken by the powerful (Hades-like) tall man into an underworld while her gardens and the crops of Bone Gap above begin to wilt.  Persephone’s mother, Demeter, became a black-winged horse similar to the one which shows up magically in the barn of the O’Sullivan boys.  Ruby’s writing is by turns, laughter and tear inducing.  Via her well-drawn characters, we see flaws that lead to an almost magical beauty. Finn, suffering from face-blindness or prosopagnosia, can’t see faces, but through Ruby’s craft shows us that truly seeing people has nothing to do with vision.

 

Bibliography

Ruby, L. (2015). Bone Gap. New York: Harper Collins.