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Reviewed by:
  • The Postcard
  • Deborah Stevenson
Abbott, Tony; The Postcard;. Little, 2008; [368p] ISBN 978-0-316-01172-3 $15.99 Reviewed from galleys R* Gr. 6-9

Florida is the last place Jason wants to go, but when his grandmother dies his mother insists Jason must accompany his father to her funeral and help close up her house. Once in St. Petersburg, thirteen-year-old Jason finds himself isolated in a land of the elderly with his clearly troubled father, who's secretive about his difficult childhood and struggling with the present. Jason's therefore on his own when mysterious occurrences pique his curiosity about his grandmother's past, but he's quickly joined by Dia, the intrepid and mouthy girl who mowed his grandmother's lawn, and the two kids are soon entrenched in a fifty-year-old mystery involving Jason's grandmother in her youth, the writer of pulp serial fiction who loved her, and her brutal and jealous father. As Jason and Dia roam St. Petersburg following the clues left by Emerson Beale, Jason's grandmother's writer beau, Jason begins to realize that the drama sheds new light on his own family history—and that it may not be done playing out yet. The plot shimmers with originality even as it evokes genre fictions. Emerson Beale's fast-paced pulp adventures, interspersed with the contemporary plot, are lusciously readable in their own right, and they ratchet up the contemporary suspense as it's clear that the past and the present are rolling toward convergence. Abbott paints a muggy and evocative picture of contemporary St. Petersburg and effectively haunts it with the candy-colored dreams of mid-century Florida, exemplified in the luridly tinted period picture postcards, reprinted in black and white in the book, that serve as clues to the locations of the chapters of Emerson's story. The author capably wrangles these elements into swiftly turning pages and an accessible drama wherein Jason's family story is the payload of the high-spirited adventure, resulting in a genuinely heartwarming tale that's touched with regret even as it moves hopefully toward a better future. [End Page 370]

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