Fresh Pick | THE SOLEMN LANTERN MAKER by Merlinda Bobis

November 2009
On Sale: October 27, 2009
Featuring: Noland
272 pages
ISBN: 038534113X
EAN: 9780385341134
Trade Size
$14.00

Fiction
Buy at Amazon.com

The Solemn Lantern Maker by Merlinda Bobis

From the award-winning author of Banana Heart Summer—“[a] wonderful debut…[that] resembles Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street and is destined to be a hit among book club members”*—comes a wondrous tale of hope, secrets, and family devotion.

It’s six days until Christmas, and on the bustling streets of Manila a mute ten-year-old boy sells his version of the stars: exquisite lanterns handmade with colorful paper. But everything changes for young Noland when he witnesses an American tourist injured in a drive-by shooting of a journalist and imagines he’s seen an angel falling from the sky.

When Noland whisks her to the safety of the hut he shares with his mother, the magical and the real collide: shimmering lanterns and poverty, Christmas carols and loss, dreams of friendship and the global war on terror. While the story of the missing tourist grips the media, Noland and his mother care for their wounded guest, and a dark memory returns. But light sneaks in — and their lives are transformed by the power of love.

*Library Journal (starred review, “Editor’s Pick”)

A thought-provoking tale that will tug at the reader's heart long after the last page is turned.

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