Lowboy

Violet Heller is a mother desperate to find her erratic schizophrenic son, Will, before he hurts those around him and himself. She teams up with missing persons specialist Ali Lateef in an attempt to track Will down, but what Lateef uncovers may ultimately threaten his own life. Narrator Paul Michael Garcia sounds involved from the very beginning of this story and never allows even the slightest moment of it to slip away from him. As the troubled youth, Will, Garcia delivers a transcendent performance that will be deeply affecting to listeners. As the boy's mother, Violet, Garcia scales back his delivery, presenting a broken-hearted character wrought with desperation as she searches for her son and keeps a secret. L.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

Starred review from September 22, 2008
Wray's captivating third novel drifts between psychological realities while exploring the narrative poetics of schizophrenia. The story centers on Will Heller, a 16-year-old New Yorker who has stopped taking his antipsychotic medication and wandered away from the mental hospital into the subway tunnels believing that the world will end within a few hours and that only he can save it. It's a novel that defies easy categorization, although in one sense it's a mystery, as a detective, Lateef, is on the case, assisted by Will's troubled mother, Violet. As Lateef tracks Will and gains some startling insight into Violet, Wray deploys brilliant hallucinatory visuals, including chilling descriptions of the subway system and an imaginary river flowing beneath Manhattan. In his previous works, Wray has shown that he's not a stranger to dark themes, and with this tightly wound novel, he reaches new heights.