I was thoroughly engrossed in this tale of 3 young boys coming to grips with the changing atmosphere of their formerly considered safe yet crumbling Portuguese suburb of Toronto. The focus of the story is the horrendous predatory killing of a boy very much like themselves. But the fact that their lives were always endangered in some unknown way clutched my heart and made me yearn to know more about how they would deal with their ever changing world. It may be all in a boys understanding that leaping across rooftops or trusting a fascinating new stranger into their world is nothing but the every day experience. But their existence is very fragile, guarded and severely hampered by juvenile impressions of being bullet-proof. I found the characters fascinating and the story compelling. De Sa has an interesting method of giving the reader just enough to make this world beautiful, haunting and enthralling.

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