River angel
By: A. Manette Ansay.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: William Morrow
Published: 1998
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 243
Subjects: Children -- Wisconsin -- Death -- Fiction; Angels -- Fiction
Description: From the author of the novel Sister comes the story of a midwestern town haunted by an angel.

In April 1991, in a little Wisconsin town about a hundred miles southwest of the town where I grew up, a misfit boy was kidnapped by a group of high school kids who, later, would testify they'd merely meant to frighten him, to drive him around for a while. Somehow the boy was shoved, he jumped, he slipped - accounts vary - into the icy water. The kids told police they never heard a splash; one reported seeing a brilliant flash of light.

All night, volunteers walked the river's edge, but it was dawn before the body was found in a barn a good mile from the bridge... The owner of the barn had been the one to discover the body, and she said the boy's cheeks were rosy, his skin warm to the touch. And then she told police she believed an angel had carried him there. For years, it had been said that an angel lived in the river.

A miracle? A hoax? Or something in between? A. Manette Ansay captures the inner life of a town and its residents struggling to forge a new identity in the face of a rapidly changing world.