“THE VISITORS” by Greg Howard (G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, 254 pages, $17).
In the acknowledgments section of his most recent middle-grade novel, “The Visitors,” Greg Howard says that this was “the most challenging story” he’s written. It’s easy to see why. The novel includes sensitive themes (slavery, sexual orientation and identity, bullying, betrayal, abuse, suicide); the main character is unable to remember anything about his life; and the narrative fits into multiple genres: coming-of-age, mystery, the supernatural. There are numerous characters, each with a backstory, and multiple stories set in different times that twine together.
In less skillful hands, readers of “The Visitors” might have been left confused or traumatized. But Howard knows his readers and his subject matter, and he weaves a narrative that faces the disturbing material squarely but compassionately, and in a clear, age-appropriate manner.
The unnamed main character of “The Visitors” “lives” (readers will quickly figure out that he’s a ghost) in the long-abandoned and seriously creepy Hollow Pines Plantation, along with former residents of the place. Some of these spirits had been enslaved when alive, and each is the survivor – or in one case the perpetrator – of at least one traumatic experience on the property.
The boy’s references to an uncle in Vietnam, Walter Cronkite and The Beatles tell us he has been dead about 50 years. What is unclear, though, is why he, along with the other ghosts, is “stuck” at the plantation. When he tries to walk off the property, he finds himself suddenly walking back in. What is keeping him trapped?