I loved, loved, loved this book. It is so well written. The writing is intelligent, thought-provoking, insightful, painful, heart wrenching, sad, and ultimately hopeful. It's almost 600 pages long, but I didn't want to put it down. These characters touched my soul. There were also twists and turns that I absolutely didn't see coming.
The main characters are Patch and Saint. They are young teens when the novel begins. Patch only has one eye, so he wears a patch over his missing eye. Therefore his name. He is also referred to as the Pirate, which he is fine with. Pirates are his passion and he knows a lot about them. He and his mother are dirt poor, and his mother spends her days & nights drinking. His uniqueness keeps potential friends away, with the exception of Saint. (On a side note, I happened to rewatch the movie Forrest Gump while reading this book and Patch & Saint's relationship reminded me a lot of Forrest & Jenny's!) Anyway, Saint befriends him, accepting his uniqueness and less desirable activities (ie stealing). She accepts him for who he is.
One day, Patch witnesses the potential abduction of a female classmate and he intervenes. The girl, Misty, is saved, but Patch disappears. No one knows what happened to him because Misty ran away when Patch told her to run. So there were no witnesses. Everyone searches for Patch, but he is not found and eventually the whole town thinks he is dead except for Saint. She continues to persistently search for Patch, knowing that he is alive. She has the support of the police chief, Chief Nix, who looks out after her on a personal level. Saint's mother is dead and her grandmother is raising her. Chief Nix doesn't exactly believe that Patch is still alive, but he believes in Saint.
Saint eventually (after several months) finds Patch alive, although he is traumatized. Patch insists that he was taken care of by a girl named Grace all the months he was missing. He was kept in a dark place. No light at all. He never saw the girl, but she told him stories and fed him antibiotics when he was ill, and held him. She would leave at times when summoned by the man that took him. Patch's fear was that one day she wouldn't return. When Patch is rescued, there is no sign of Grace. Patch is consumed by her, however, and this changes the trajectory of his life again: looking for Grace. No one knows if Grace actually existed, or if Patch's traumatized brain imagined her.
Meanwhile, Misty, the wealthy and beautiful classmate that he saved from abduction, is eternally grateful for Patch saving her life. She wants to be near him. So does Saint. Patch wants to find Grace. The focal point in the lives of these three people stems from Patch's abduction. It changes the rest of their lives. The rest of the book (which is incredibly written) is Misty loving Patch; Saint loving Patch - and believing in him, which is most important; Patch searching for Grace.
I can count on one hand how many books I have wanted to start over after finishing it. This is one of them.
Wendy's Rating: *****
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