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Pages: 56
Goes Well With: a chili dog, snack size bag of chips (any flavor), and your favorite beverage
All young Troy wants to do is go fishing with his dad—never mind that it’s cold and sleet is falling outside. But, after Troy’s mother died in a car wreck, his dad hasn’t done anything except drink and sleep, and he can’t seem to pull himself together enough to get through each day, let alone take care of a young child.
While in the hospital recuperating from the same accident that killed his mother, Troy began talking to an imaginary friend named JC. That, combined with an imaginary place inside a fire in the woods, makes Troy’s father mad and somewhat scared for reasons Troy doesn’t understand.
As memories of the accident resurface, Troy begins to suspect that his dad is keeping something from him—something he’ll soon remember on his own—something that just might devastate Troy when he learns the truth.
Into the Fire is an absorbing, slice-of-life, mainstream novella with a bit of a shocking twist at the end. Curiosity about what was truly going on kept me clinging to this well-written story. I had my guesses and a fuzzy idea about how it might end, but I never truly put it all together.
However, Into the Fire might leave you with lingering questions. I wasn’t quite sure what the peaceful place inside the fire represented. Maybe it was meant to be left open to interpretation—kind of like the ending in Lois Lowry’s The Giver.
Pleasant and engaging, Into the Fire is a good read to get lost in during your lunch break, to take your mind off work for an hour—and perhaps make the rest of the work day go easier.
