The Prodigy

by Alton Gansky
PRMS discard paperback 340 pages
genre: Christian fiction

I couldn't tell by reading the blurb if this would appeal to my students or not, so I started reading it at lunch time. I decided to remove it from my collection, but really enjoyed it. The story opens with teenage Mary giving birth to a boy she names Toby. The boy's father is MIA (and violent when he does come around) and by the time he is six, Toby and his mom are headed across country to avoid dad's cruelty.

Toby is special in that he can sense people's emotions and detect when something is wrong with them. He also can heal. This book was not at all what I expected and I really enjoyed it - the suspense, the characters' lives coming together (Thomas, Pratt, etc.) I'm going to see if anyone at book club wants it.

page 132 really resonated with me. "As the dark of the predawn surrendered to the pressing light of daybreak, a new and troubling realization surfaced in Pratt's mind. What troubled him was not Thomas but a nerve that the young student had struck. Was he, Dr. Aaron Pratt, professor of theology, paddling around in the shallows? Did he still have the youthful zeal to know and experience God that Thomas York possessed? A disturbing thought began to ache in his soul. He could recite scores of Bible passages, converse intelligently about church history, and shed light on every nuance of theological debate. So what? Did that make him a good Christian?"

page 333 on the airplane (the climax of the action for sure) - I love when Toby confronts Wellman and the evil "shadow man." When he quotes Scripture, I was so glad Thomas gave him his own Bible. A voracious reader, Toby soaked up knowledge quickly.

A very cool book. About 15 years old, but I like the suspense and storytelling style.

Wow. Um. As I finished this entry and was putting the author's name as the label, I saw that I already had "Gansky" in my blog. Hmm! After I posted, I searched the name . . .. and found that I read and blogged this exact title seven years ago! How could I have enjoyed the book (both times) yet have NO memory of ever reading it before? That's kind of sad, but also why I blog my books. I read a lot, but I also forget a lot.