Blood Family

When police enter the squalid apartment of petty criminal Bryce Harris, they discover seven-year-old Eddie and his catatonic mother. Taken into custody, Eddie leaves the apartment for the first time in years. Despite loving foster parents and, later, a supportive adoptive family, Eddie—now Edward—struggles to hide the damage done by years of abuse and neglect, even as he tries to present a front of normalcy. Selected to assist in an anthropologist’s demonstration of age-progression software during a school trip, Edward, now 15, is horrified to see Harris’s face staring back at him. The realization that Harris was his father sends Edward spiraling out of control. Could he become the same inhuman monster his father was? Rotating among the perspectives of Edward and various people in his life (neighbors, social workers, foster parents, etc.), Fine (The Road of Bones) movingly traces Edward’s long struggle to cope with a world he was ill prepared to enter. The realistic and varied viewpoints of the many characters she introduce will keep readers fully invested in a story that’s tragic but not hopeless. Ages 14–up. (Mar.)