The Boy from Tomorrow by Camille DeAngelis

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Boy from Tomorrow by Camille DeAngelis Sarah Sahn DeAngelis, Camille The Boy from Tomorrow. Amberjack, 2018 [267p] ISBN 978-1-944995-61-4 $15.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 5-7 Josie and her younger sister, Cass, live an isolated life in their small upstate New York town in 1915; they're confined to their house by their eccentric mother, a medium of dubious authenticity and favorite subject of the town gossips. A hundred years later, Alec and his mom move from Manhattan into the same house after his parents' divorce, and Alec finds the medium's "talking board"—a hand-painted Ouija board she had used in her psychic readings. It's beautiful, but Alec never expects it to actually work—until he finds himself using to communicate with Josie, Cass, and their tutor, Emily. Josie is twelve, like Alec, and they both find the kind of friend and confidant they had longed for in one another. Things get complicated when Josie's mother discovers Josie's across-time communication and [End Page 330] tries to use Alec to make accurate predictions about the future, and Alec comes to realize that the medium isn't merely eccentric but abusive. DeAngelis crafts an engaging tale of friendship in chapters that alternate between 1915 and 2015, as Josie tries to navigate her mother's capricious moods, and Alec's investigations into the past convince him to somehow help Josie and Cass escape from their mother before she hurts one of them. Both Alec and Josie are introspective by nature, and they give plenty of consideration to the possible consequences of their connection across time—rather more wisely than the adults who come into contact with the talking board. Their inevitable parting is bittersweet, but the novel itself is full of hope for the future. Fans of historical fiction and ghost stories will devour this title, and those new to either genre will find it a heady introduction. SS Copyright © 2017 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois