World Book Night

Tonight marks the first year that World Book Night has come to American shores. The idea is one that seems beautiful to me: volunteers all over the country will be showing up in random public places and giving out free copies of a book they love to strangers. I think it's an amazing means of promoting several things you don't see every day: meaningly interactions between strangers, free gifts with no strings attached. I think that it's a beautiful thing to love a story so much that you want to share it with others. That's the mysterious, magical power of the written word that made me fall in love with reading, a love that has been one of my life's most profound and important constants.

I signed up too late to participate, but I thought I'd spread the love for the one book out of the selected group of 30 that I would have handed out tonight.

This is a story about a boy who thinks his father can perform miracles. But when his older brother is suspected of murder and the family must journey across the country to find him, the boy discovers that maybe his father can't always make things right. This story is a grown-up American tall tale that invites the reader into the strange, beautiful mind of a unique young mind as he navigates an emotional landscape that tests and scratches away at his faith.

This book is very much about believing in the miraculous; and, like most of my very favorite books, that is precisely what makes it difficult to describe. Trust me when I say it's a beautiful book. If I could, I'd give it to you...free of charge.