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Book Review of Zoe Rising

Zoe Rising
Zoe Rising
Author: Pam Conrad
Genre: Children's Books
Book Type: Paperback
reviewed on + 219 more book reviews


This glowing story of a girl who leaves her body and travels back through time to save her mother is a worthy sequel to the Edgar Allan Poe Award winner Stonewords. Many teens know the feeling of being captive in their bodies, wanting to burst out and fly away to fix things that went wrong a long time ago. Fourteen-year-old Zoe can actually do it: "Without moving I turned around inside my body, fully, again and again. My arms left the shell of my arms... I was like a little paper umbrella twirling." Her "ghostwalking" frightens her, but she is compelled to use her power to solve a mystery in her estranged mother's past. The luminescent language and harrowing plot of loss and retrieval swirls Zoe from summer camp back through time to her mother's childhood in an island home. There, Zoe must summon all her ghostly abilities to protect her mother-child from tragedy. Unlike many molecularly-enhanced heroes, Zoe keeps getting yanked out of the dramatic past by present interruptions.