SOJALS rating:

Awful (1/5)

I first read this on the 30th September 2002.

Travis Fisher arrives In Haute Montagne, a small town in the American Mid-west. He's come to stay with his aunt. He's in search of acceptance, but has trouble escaping the taint of the scandal that consumed his mother. He meets Nancy Wilcox, also something of an outsider, and they start dating.

All would probably go well, except that both Travis and Nancy are consumed with curiosity about the strange girl that lives, in fact hides, in his aunt's house. She is stunningly beautiful and exerts a magnetic attraction for the both of them.

Meanwhile a mysterious man, Bone, is traveling the tracks from California, searching for the place he knows he has to be, not knowing who he is or why he is searching. He's suffered a lot during his journey, and he'll suffer more before he gets to Haute Montagne.

A depressing blend of SF and fantasy, well-written and even gripping but, since the all occurrences of the word alien could have been replaced with angel with no otherwise noticeable changes, it's far, far from being my kind of SF.

I'd never call a book 'A Hidden Place'. I'd forever after be wondering if it should have been 'An Hidden Place' or not.