Mr. Was

Growing up with an alcoholic dad and a frightened, abused mother is no picnic. But when Jack and his mother drive through a winter snowstorm to visit his dying grandfather Skoro, things soon get worse. Skoro dies with his gnarled hands wrapped around Jack's throat. The next day, Jack and his mother move into Boggs End, Skoro's creaky, oversized house high on a bluff. While exploring a closed-off section of the house, Jack comes upon a hidden metal door that leads into a narrow passageway. When he follows the passage, he emerges into a garden outside the house--but it's not the garden he remembers. In this garden, it is summer. Jack soon discovers that he has traveled back in time to 1941. Frightened by his experience there, Jack returns to the present through the mysterious doorway, determined to keep the door a secret. But then Jack's father starts drinking again, this time with fatal consequences. Jack witnesses his mother's horrific death, and flees back through the metal door to 1941, planning to stay alive until 1993 and prevent his mother's death. Unfortunately, World War II is coming, and Jack soon finds himself fighting not only for his mother's life, but for his own.

Pete Hautman is the author of National Book Award–winning novel Godless, Sweetblood, Hole in the Sky, Stone Cold, The Flinkwater Factor, The Forgetting Machine, and Mr. Was, which was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America, as well as several adult novels. He lives in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Visit him at PeteHautman.com.