The Snowman's Children — Glen Hirshberg

The Snowman's Children is a poignant, psychologically intense first novel that tells the story of an incident from one man's childhood in the 1970s, when a serial killer called The Snowman stalked the streets of suburban Detroit. The incident, a result of good but woefully misguided juvenile intentions, forced his family to leave their home, and eventually forced him, at age twenty-nine, to return to his hometown in search of three old friends. Reminiscent of both To Kill a Mockingbird in its touching portrait of childhood, and the beautifully written brand of suspense that calls to mind Smilla's Sense of Snow, The Snowman's Children is an unusually controlled and original novel that establishes Hirshberg as an important new voice in American literature.