The Bones in the Cliff

Starred review from May 1, 1995
The prolific picture book author and illustrator here unveils an utterly gripping first novel. Living on a New England island with his alcoholic father, 11-year-old Pete has strict orders to meet each ferry and search the disembarking crowd for a large, cigar-smoking man; if the man appears, Pete is to call his father. Pete doesn't know exactly what or whom his father is hiding from, but he remembers all too well an incident he witnessed two years earlier, when his father was beaten by two men in the Bronx. Pete's is a dismal, lonely existence: his mother is hospitalized with severe depression, and his father chronically ignores him and sometimes beats him. But the boy's days brighten considerably when he meets Rootie, a spunky girl who takes Pete on a string of diverting adventures. So pleasantly distracting is Rootie's company that the otherwise diligent Pete fails to meet the boat on which the feared man finally arrives. This coincidence aside, Stevenson's novel introduces a believable and sympathetic protagonist caught in a heart-wrenching situation. A number of unanswered questions and several deftly crafted moments of suspense will keep even reluctant readers rapt-and occasionally white-knuckled. Ages 10-up.

April 1, 1995
Gr 4-6-Pete, 11, lives on an island with his alcoholic father and has been given the chore of watching the ferry landings to spot the man who wants to kill his father. He makes friends with an adventurous girl named Rootie and her grandmother, enjoys a hurricane, worries about his courage, and saves his parent in the nick of time. The book cannot sustain all that is pushed into it. Pete must contend with the underworld, his father's drinking and subsequent rough behavior, not to mention the insecurities of every lonely kid. The settings, both time and place, skip around, from present to past, from Cape Cod to the Bronx. Necessary character development loses out to sudden introductions of dramatic plot twists. The bones of the title are disappointing. Rootie points them out in an early chapter during a bike ride near some eroded cliffs telling him they are human bones. What promise! But they are never mentioned again until the end, in a vague reference alluding to the fact that secrets don't stay covered up. Pete is a sensitive youngster, who readers will readily like. And Rootie sets a good course as the adventurous pal. But there is too much undeveloped and unresolved to give readers the story that wants to break through.-Sally Margolis, Deerfield Public Library, IL

Starred review from May 1, 1995
Gr. 4-7. Someone is after Pete's father. That's why they have to move all the time. That's why 11-year-old Pete is alone and afraid. Now they're on Cutlass Island, and Pete must watch the daily ferryboat to see if the hit man is coming. Stevenson is a master of the understated picture book; here, he writes an elemental thriller for middle-grade readers. The inexorable pace makes you read fast to find out what's happening; yet even the most casual phrases of Pete's narrative make you want to stop and think about the place and the people. The island setting is wild and melancholy, dangerous and thrilling, the seething surf "strung with tatters of fog." Slowly Pete's grim family story emerges: his mother is institutionalized for depression; his father is an alcoholic and abusive. As the hit man gets closer, Pete's friendship with a feisty girl on the island gives him hope. She breaks his isolation and helps him find what he wants more than anything--courage. ((Reviewed May 01, 1995))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1995, American Library Association.)