A Boy in Winter — Maxine Chernoff

A Boy in Winter takes the stuff of newspaper headlines and explores, in a taut, deeply moving narrative, the human passions behind it.
        
After Nancy Horvath and her eleven-year-old son, Danny, move into their dream house, Danny becomes fast friends with ten-year-old Eddie Nova, the boy next door. Eddie is a hyperactive, difficult child, both boon companion and bane of Danny's existence. Meanwhile, Nancy's helpful, neighborly relationship with Eddie's father, Frank, becomes a passionate affair. Frank is the partner Nancy wishes she had, and the father Danny has always longed for. Then one day, Eddie brings over a hunting bow and playfully aims it at Danny and his dog. In a tragic mishap, Danny accidentally shoots and kills his friend.
        
The novel traces the repercussions of that accident--in Nancy's voice, in Danny's voice, and from Frank's point of view. Danny's extraordinary account of the events that led up to the action is a heartbreaking, pitch-perfect record of the complications of love, the weight of isolation, and the ultimate opacity of intention and motivation. How Nancy's fierce, enduring love for her son sustains a future for him and how Frank's devastating loss and guilt play into that future provide drama-tic counterpoint to Danny's painful dissection of what he has done.
        
With stunning imagination and an almost sculptural elegance of storytelling, Maxine Cher-noff balances the radical shock of tragedy with the hard-won optimism of survival. She brilliantly enacts how a child stunned by grief and the adults who love him reclaim their trust in the future. Ultimately, A Boy in Winter testifies to the power of parental love and steadfast friendship to provide hope and faith in the face of tragedy.