This is another book that has been lingering on my Kindle, and having now read it, I wonder why it took me so long. I would have read this book in one sitting, but my Kindle died at 92%. I raced to my back-up Kindle only to find I’d failed to recharge it. So I had to finish the last 8% book on a second day. It is a gem of a book, a quiet, emotional story filled with a low-key tension. It’s a poignant look at the life of one particular, peculiar family. that is enchanting and hopeful.
In 1960s America, Amber Grove, a small town in New England was stuck by a meteor on what started out as a run-of-the-mill day. People were killed and injured, and fires devastated the area. Author Cox does a splendid job of recreating the tensions of the 1960s: the long-haired, pot-smoking hippies; Woodstock; the straight folks who toed the line; the Cold War; the Vietnam war; the constant fear of atomic bombs; the protest marches against the war; the marches for racial equality; the first moonwalk. It also deals quietly with other tough topics: racism, killing, climate destruction, military power, wars between countries, alienation, isolation, alcoholism, depression, grief and mourning.
Hidden from the people of Amber Grove is the fact that the so-called meteor was an alien space ship, and survivors were found: an alien mother and her child. The mother dies, thus all attention focuses on the child. Several people decide to protect him, he must be sheltered from contact with all but a few humans. Despite these restrictions, his nurse, Molly Myers, bonds with him and names him “Cory” for the cor-cor-cor sound he makes.
Cox manages to capture the youthful exuberance of this alien child down to his voice, that of a boy so eager to get the words out that they come out in a staccato rat-tat-tat. The physical description is vague enough readers can draw their own versions of the boy in their minds. He is smart, curious, and adventurous—and utterly endearing. As he’s confined to the space between the four walls of the Myers household, he has no other children to play with. Thus, under this lovable appearance, lies a lonely child. Not only isolated from humans, he is from a planet in which there is communal sleeping—and communal dreams. His own kind, who is supposed to come rescue him, is millions of miles away.
Towards the end of the book, the action picks up dramatically. Cory and his family are running for their lives, trying to escape from the FBI, the American military, Russian spies, curious reporters, and thugs who want to sell him for a profit.
Our Child of the Stars is a poignant portrait of an American family, the ties that bind this family, and the strength of those ties. It’s a story of a nearly-broken couple brought back together by the random twist of fate when an alien child lands in their life. The novel looks at how far this family will go to protect the ones they love.
********************
Our Child of the Stars is available through:
********************
An excerpt from Chapter One, Our Child of the Stars:
Molly sat by her bedroom window, sewing Cory’s Halloween costume. Looking out, Crooked Street was warm in the soft sunlight. Soon the old porches would shine with pumpkin lanterns, heads of orange fire with their savage grins. Long ragged witches and skeletons hung from the gutters and swayed as the wind ruffled the leaves of yellow, red and brown. She loved the sad beauty of fall, the possibilities as summer left and winter came.
The Myers house had been full of Halloween for days. The three of them carved pumpkins while sugar girls wooed their candy boys on the radio. Gene and Molly had enjoyed days of Cory’s endless chatter, and making things from painted leaves, and Molly’s attempts to bake new things from her old Joy of Cooking book. Cory couldn’t decide between a pirate and a sorcerer, so Molly said at last, ‘Be both.’ He flailed his arms in excitement. Then he saw how much gold braid she brought back from the shop – two double fistfuls – and he ‘want it all-all Mom.’ Red and gold – Cory never did half-measures.
There was so much small print in being a mother, like racing to finish the costume because not disappointing him mattered.
Cory got so antsy and up close, she couldn’t sew straight around him. She retreated to the bedroom, with the chair propped under the handle. Gene thought that when he found time he’d mend the lock, but it never quite happened.
As a child, the Jack-o-lantern was a familiar friend, and yet it still brought a shiver as night fell. Little Molly had loved dressing up as someone else, staying up late to hear scary stories, eating more candy than was good for her and running through the back streets at dusk, kicking up dry papery leaves. She could pretend twisting shadows were real horrors. The years passed and Molly put Halloween away, like a favourite toy in an attic box. She still loved fall when the year ran downhill to the dark.
In time, adult joys and adult fears came instead: her first job, a wedding song, the house. And a death.
She shook off a cold shudder. There were things to do.
Cory had come: their son, their miracle, and Gene and Molly had found so many things again. Snow angels and Christmas stockings, birthday surprises and fireworks on the Fourth of July. Cory would squat to look at some tiny green flower or stand entranced by the song of a single bird. He adored the day of disguises; he was made for Halloween and it was made for him.
As she sewed, Molly heard him outside in the hallway. That eerie creak could only be Cory swinging from the fold-down attic ladder and the little pad, pad, pad was him running along the corridor and back. You could never mistake that tread for anyone else. Sometimes all went quiet, which might mean Cory was hanging off the stair rail, upside down, to see how long he could do it. He might be out of the attic window and up onto the roof with his telescope, like some pirate up the mast. Cory often looked out across Amber Grove, official population 18,053 and proud of it, gazing north to the forest with its strange scar.
‘Safe Mom, look. Cory too clever to fall.’
But she didn’t think he’d fall. It wasn’t falling that frightened her.
********************
This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn a small amount from qualifying purchases.
