Christopher is seven years old. Christopher is the new boy in town. Christopher has an imaginary friend.
We can overcome our fear or let it overcome us. Kate Reese is a single mother trying to escape her abusive relationship because she wants a better life for herself and her son Christopher. After racing through the night, they end up in the Pennsylvania town of Mill Grove, which is as far off the beaten track as possible. The community is closed, there is only one main road leading into the city, and the same exit. At first, Mill Grove seems like the perfect place for them to finally settle down. Then Christopher disappears and no one finds him. After six long days, he emerges from the forest on the edge of the city: unharmed, but somehow different. From then on, a voice in his head speaks to him that only he can hear, and he has a mission that only he can fulfill: he must build a tree house in the forest by Christmas, or his mother and everyone else in town will be changed forever.
Stephen Chbosky's Memoirs of an Eccentric Guy was published twenty years ago and gave readers a sense of limitlessness. Now he has returned with a horror that has matured over many years, whose cosmic dimensions and emotional richness transform the definition of the genre.