The Disappearance

Written by Gillian Chan

Annick Press

978-1-55451-983-5

197 pp.

Ages 12+

September 2017

The who of the disappearance is Jacob but the why and where and how are answers that the police are  trying to extract from his group home roommate Mike McCallum, a teen who obviously has something to hide and is pleased to do so.  

It's pretty hard for Mike to stay under everyone's radar.  He's a big guy and his face is massively disfigured after his mother's boyfriend Danny brought a cleaver down on it.  Still Mike's internal scarring, from the death of his little brother Jon by Danny's drunken hand, is far worse.  Taken from his mother, a woman who regrets Danny being in prison, Mike has been in foster care for three years before he ends up at Medlar House.  There amongst the foster kids he meets the enigmatic Jacob, a boy who'd been found beaten up and unconscious in Dundas Valley Conservation Area and rarely speaks and shuts down in body and spirit when overwhelmed.  But when Jacob finally speaks to Mike it is to tell him that Jon has been there and has told Jacob about his death and more.

As Mike learns the routines of Medlar House and the personalities of the other kids, especially keeping an eye on the vicious Paddy and his lackey Matt, the fearful Adam and the victimized Jacob, he finds his role changing from thug to protector.  In his own way, Mike is trying to right his own wrong i.e., not saving Jon. But before he can really help, Jacob is exposed to far greater danger and horrific bullying that compels Mike to try to find a happy ending for this boy.  What he learns, with the help of Adam, is as mysterious as Jacob himself.

Without spoiling Gillian Chan's extraordinary plot twist, I can say that The Disappearance includes a supernatural element that has never been handled as eloquently as it has here. It is unexpected and unique and wholly convincing. (I want to share.  Really I do.  But I can't.) Still, even beyond her fantastic plot, Gillian Chan creates rich characters–Mike, Jacob, Adam, Chaz, Paddy, and others–that carry this story of hurts.  What has happened to Mike and Jacob is tragic.  Their lives have been destroyed by vicious and uncaring people whose choices superseded benevolence.  Even the charity granted the boys is tempered by the personalities of those involved: some do-gooders, some lazy, others greedy and some, like Chaz, compassionate and effective.  All they can do is endure and hopefully survive.  Without giving the reader a fairy tale ending of rainbows and sunshine, Gillian Chan resolves the story with realism and justness and the anticipation that sometimes you can save another.

```````````````````````````

The launch for The Disappearance is tomorrow in Hamilton.  Do go if you're in the area.  Details are provided here.

The Disappearance: Book launch (Hamilton, ON)

Join best-selling author

Gillian Chan

author of middle-grade and young adult

historical fiction, short stories and more

for the launch of her newest young adult book

The Disappearance

Written by Gillian Chan

Annick Press

978-1-55451-983-5

208 pp.

Ages 12+

September 2017

on

  Saturday, October 7, 2017

1:30 p.m.

at 

The Reading Room

Bryan Prince Bookseller

1060 King Street West

Hamilton, ON

I hope to review this book before the launch (thanks Annick Press for the review copy!) but, until it is posted, here is the publisher's take on what is sure to be a superbly suspenseful read:

A fast-paced, gritty mystery with a supernatural twist.

Jacob Mueller and Mike McCallum couldn’t be more different. After mystifying doctors, who finally decide that he is an elective mute, Jacob ends up in a juvenile group home, isolated, withdrawn, and bullied. Mike, also in the group home, is scarred physically and emotionally after the murder of his younger brother. He uses his horrific appearance, imposing size, sharp intelligence, and a calculated brutality to keep everyone at bay—until he encounters Jacob. Mike is fascinated by Jacob, particularly the way in which he seems able to shut out the world around him. This fascination becomes tinged with a mixture of awe and horror when Jacob starts to talk, and appears to have knowledge of Mike’s past, particularly of his dead brother. Mike takes it upon himself to solve the puzzle that is Jacob Mueller, and when he comes to the impossible conclusion that Jacob is from another time, he makes it his mission to return him home.

Retrieved from http://www.annickpress.com/Disappearance-The on September 28, 2017.

The lovely Gillian Chan promises

• a reading

• talk of books

• refreshments

• book sales and signing

and

possibly

• learning who disappeared and why.

Will you be there?

A Call to Battle: The War of 1812, Alexander MacKay, Upper Canada, 1812

by Gillian Chan
Scholastic Canada
978-1-4431-0006-9
195 pp.
Ages 8-12
September, 2012

When the War of 1812 began, Alexander "Sandy" MacKay was only 13 years old, and helping on the family farm near Ancaster.  As clearly as he hears A Call To Battle, determined to join his father and older brother, Angus, in the militia, Sandy is instructed to stay behind with his mother, three younger siblings and two older sisters.  So begins Sandy's recount as he looks back on the events that have lead him to his current journey to Pennsylvania in 1820.

While 1812 progresses from the president's declaration of war in June through to the victory at Queenston, the loss of General Brock and the Yankees' fear of Tecumseh, Sandy knows little of battle experiences except as recounted to him by those returning home.  When his father is stricken with a debilitating case of gaol's fever, as is Angus but less severely, Sandy is disappointed to hear few details about heroic deeds and the glory of war.  He sees shame in the retreat of the British when the Americans capture York in the spring of 1813 and cowardice in his new brother-in-law, Eric, who does not go to war.  Regardless how his father urges him not to be so quick to judge and to look for vain glory, Sandy pursues opportunities to engage in the War.

As the War of 1812 moves into 1814, Sandy finds himself on the outskirts and then in the midst of battles, and sees the reality of war.  His enlightenment is slow but sure, seeing the death toll and drudgery of moving and burying the dead, and then the horror of death in both the British and American ranks.  He may finally experience the reality of war as he craves but Sandy can see beyond his initial expectations and ...

"cried for shattered dreams of glory and adventure that had ended with a bloody, broken boy in a wood. I cried for oblivion ..." (pg. 152)

A Call to Battle is an exceptional edition in Scholastic Canada's I am Canada series.  In any novel of historical fiction, there is the danger of emphasizing the historically-accurate events and characters rather than the story elements, particularly plot.  Gillian Chan's research and poignant emphasis on Sandy MacKay's perspective of the War of 1812, not the detailed events documented in the history textbooks, takes the book from a dry read of a military action to a compassionate look at how boys and young men may see the glory of war, that is, until experienced first-hand.  By allowing Sandy to experience war by dealing first with the dead and injured, then running errands and finally pressed into assisting the surgeon in amputating limbs, rather than just engaging in combat, Gillian Chan has made the War of 1812 in A Call to Battle more of the setting rather than the plot, enabling the reader to see the commonality of young men seeking glory from all manner of military action, be it war, battle, skirmish or attack, defense or offense.  Alexander MacKay's story could be set during World War I, the Boer War, the Seven Years' War or the War of 1812 because the lessons he learns and incorporates are universal.  Sadly, the lessons learned always seem to come after exposure to the conflict, rather than before it.  I can only hope that there are some young people who, after reading A Call to Battle, are moved to rethink their attitudes about war and weaponry and power, hopefully before first-hand experiences destroy more than just their false impressions.