The Sin-Eater's Confession

by Ilsa J. Bick

Overview

People in Merit, Wisconsin, always said Jimmy was . . . you know. But people said all sorts of stupid stuff. Nobody really knew anything. Nobody really knew Jimmy.

I guess you could say I knew Jimmy as well as anyone (which was not very well). I knew what scared him. And I knew he had dreams—even if I didn't understand them. Even if he nearly ruined my life to pursue them.

Jimmy's dead now, and I definitely know that better than anyone. I know about blood and bone and how bodies decompose. I know about shadows and stones and hatchets. I know what a last cry for help sounds like. I know what blood looks like on my own hands.

What I don't know is if I can trust my own eyes. I don't know who threw the stone. Who swung the hatchet? Who are the shadows? What do the living owe the dead?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467737050
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/01/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.40(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Ilsa J. Bick is a child psychiatrist, as well as a film scholar, surgeon wannabe, former Air Force major, and an award-winning, best-selling author of short stories, e-books, and novels. She has written extensively in the Star Trek, Battletech, Mechwarrior: Dark Age, and Shadowrun universes. Her original stories have been featured in numerous anthologies, magazines and online venues.  Ilsa's YA paranormal, Draw the Dark, was also a semifinalist for the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (as Stalag Winter).  Ilsa currently lives with her family and other furry creatures in rural Wisconsin and across the street from the local Hebrew cemetery. One thing she loves about the neighbors: They're very quiet and come around for sugar only once in a blue moon.

Editorial Reviews

"Bick (Drowning Instinct) crafts a powerful tale of bigotry and murder in small-town Wisconsin....a potent examination of teenage emotions and reactions to peer and parental pressures, and to the evil that people are capable of." —starred, Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

Bick (Drowning Instinct) crafts a powerful tale of bigotry and murder in small-town Wisconsin. High school senior Ben imagines he will go to Yale and become a doctor, just like his mother has always encouraged him to do. When a star athlete dies in an accident, Ben helps the boy’s family out and befriends his younger brother, Jimmy, who dreams of becoming a great photographer. Jimmy’s evangelical father fears that his son’s hobby and friendship with Ben are indicators of homosexuality, and the rumors and conflicts that emerge over the following months result in Ben witnessing Jimmy’s brutal murder. Ben’s attempts to understand what he saw, as well as his uncertainties about his own sexuality (Ben’s friendships with Jimmy and a classmate named Brooke are both sources of self-doubt), drive the rest of the novel. Told entirely in flashback from Ben’s perspective as a medic in Afghanistan, Bick’s story isn’t a mystery in the whodunit sense. Instead, it’s a potent examination of teenage emotions and reactions to peer and parental pressures, and to the evil that people are capable of. Ages 14–up. Agent: Jennifer Laughran, Andrea Brown Literary Agency. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Stationed in Afghanistan, medic Ben spends a long day drafting a detailed confession about the tragedy that threw his life off course two years earlier. When the tiny town of Merit, Wis., loses its football hero to a drunk-driving accident, his family needs help on their dairy farm. High school senior Ben steps up to help. His mother hopes it'll give him fodder for his Yale admissions essay; Ben, unsure he wants to follow the path she's laid out for him, just likes helping the stern Mr. and Mrs. Lange and their 15-year-old son, Jimmy. When Jimmy wins a national photography contest with sensual photographs of his own father and Ben (both taken without permission), rumors that the baby-faced Jimmy is gay jump into overdrive--and start circulating about Ben, who then distances himself from Jimmy. When Ben witnesses a horrific crime and does nothing, his life spins out of control; he begins to doubt himself, his senses, his motives…even his connection to reality. Bick's compelling tale manages to be a blistering confessional and a page-turning whodunit (or maybe what-really-happened) all in one. Ben's thoughts on sexuality, the dangers of rumor, individual freedom and personal responsibility, among other topics, will resonate with teens, who won't mind the lack of a tidy end. Readers won't be able to look away even if they find they don't much like--or trust--Ben. (Fiction. 14 & up)

Kirkus Reviews