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Product Description
First-time author Neil Connelly's deft and insightful novel about 15-year-old Keegan Flannery's search for life, described by one reader as a male version of Laurie Halse Anderson's "Speak"
Keegan Flannery was born a twin though his brother Michael did not survive birth. Now, two weeks before Keegan's sixteenth birthday, he has a dream about his own death. Understanding that Michael was supposed to have lived, and it was he who was meant to have died, Keegan sets out to right all the wrongs by planning his own suicide.
But in the final weeks before his 16th birthday and his last day on earth, life intercedes in the plan: Keegan joins the wrestling team and a dialogue between him and his father begins. And it may just be enough to change Keegan's ideas about confession, penance, and the gift of being alive.
Amazon.com Review
No matter how hard he tries, Keegan Flannery just can't forgive himself. With no close friends to confide in and only a silent, broken father at home, Keegan torments himself daily with the belief that he is to blame for the dissipation of his once vibrant family. As the only person with his mother when she suffered a mental collapse, Keegan feels responsible for her decline, as well as the infant death of his twin, Michael. In a dark vision of his own beginning, he imagines choosing his life over Michael's, "Even when my hands pulled on his shoulders and pushed him down, away; even when I stood on his body and shoved myself up to be born, my brother never fought." Now Keegan, a devout Catholic, has decided that his short life is worth very little when weighed on the spectral scales of St. Michael the Archangel, his twin's patron saint. So instead of a party, he begins to plan a suicide for his 16th birthday. Only a curmudgeonly coach, a wild card wrestler named Nicky, and an acknowledged place on the school's underdog wrestling team stand between Keegan and all eternity. But will they be enough to encourage an underweight, overwrought wrestler who's lost his will to fight?
A deep, dense book full of contrasts between light and dark, and rich in religious and mythological symbol, St. Michael's Scales is not for the casual teen browser. But for those dedicated readers who champion Keegan through the bleak days before his birthday, the literary rewards are greatly satisfying. (Ages 13 and older) --Jennifer Hubert
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