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teen and so I left the nest as early as possible. As children we were left to decide what we wanted to do with our lives--no one was pushed into a vocation or professional field--it was left up to each of us to be self motivated and self sustained. I wanted to write  books and be involved with literature and there was no template for that in our family so when I went out on my own as a teen I knew I had to define what I wanted and figure out how to get it. This was a lot to shoulder and the pursuit of my goals somehow led to a diminished bond with my family.”

The following conversation with his own mother was a key to the creation of his newest story:  “The mother wouldn’t let them marry,” my mother said, “wouldn’t let them have adult lives but one of them went catting around and got a woman pregnant and a child resulted.”

“What happened to the child?” I asked. “Nobody knows”, she said, already clearing the table.

“Can you take a guess?” I asked. “Maybe an adoption”, she said uncertainly. “Really, the only thing I know is that all that Rumbaugh’s money vanished.  Once they died the pharmacy was gutted and everything disappeared - including you-know-who.”

           It is that very child named Ivy, born out of wedlock, who tells the tale as a seventeen-year-old girl in Gantos’ latest young adult novel.

The story begins as we become familiar

with Ivy and her mother.  Inseparable, the pair lives in the Kelly Hotel in a small western Pennsylvania town across the street from the local pharmacy.  The eccentric owners of the Rumbaugh Pharmacy, Ab and Dolph, are twins whose “waxy white hair was horsetail thick and glazed with the gold color of old teeth and tobacco, and their thin, nearly transparent skin looked like milk spilled over a road map of blue and red veins.” (p.8) Ivy befriends these aged men and finds herself irresistibly drawn to the hobby of taxidermy under the guidance of the odd twins who prize displays of deceased animals.   As the story unfolds, hauntingly dark secrets are revealed to Ivy by accident as she literally stumbles into the creepy truth about her family history and her predetermined fate.

Family love is the crux of the curse.  Teachers and students will be intrigued by the disturbing tale.  Readers will cringe at some of the descriptions of taxidermy and yet they will keep turning the pages to see what the Rumbaughs will reveal next.  Gantos’ spellbinding story is a fascinating yarn spun from the themes of motherly love, taxidermy, and obsession.