The Snowman's Children (2007)
A novel by Glen Hirshberg

Introduction by Elizabeth Hand
Afterword by Gary A. Braunbeck
Art by Alex McVey

Modern Classics


 

SYNOPSIS: In the mid-1970s, as a serial killer called the Snowman stalks the streets of suburban Detroit, and the racial tension that has ripped the city in half a decade earlier continues to underscore every aspect of daily life, Mattie and Spenser, two exceptionally bright eleven-year-old boys, wage and increasingly desperate and misguided campaign to save their friend Theresa, a brilliant, cryptic, troubled young girl, from descending into terrifying mental illness. The final, grand act of that campaign has shattering effects on many lives, drives Mattie's family from their home, and ultimately lures him, seventeen years later, back to Detroit to seek out his lost friends and make one last attempt to set things right.

Glen Hirshberg's debut novel is the third book in Earthling’s Modern Classics series and features an introduction by Elizabeth Hand, an afterword by Gary A. Braunbeck, and numerous full-page interior illustrations by Alex McVey.

       


THE SNOWMAN'S CHILDREN will be released in the following editions:

250 numbered hardcovers, fully bound in leather with foil stamping to the spine and front board, slipcased, and signed by the author $85
15 lettered, traycased hardcovers, book and traycase completely hand made using the finest materials, and signed by Glen Hirshberg, Elizabeth Hand, Gary A. Braunbeck, and artist Alex McVey Inquire about a Lettered Copy

 Please click here to purchase a copy

 

"Glen Hirshberg has written a dense, intricate, and eerily beautiful novel about the perils of childhood, families, friendships, and real monsters. You fall under the spell of this book, as if falling backwards into a bank of soft, deep snow."
— Kelly Link

"A chilling debut...Haunting and sharply rendered..."
— KIRKUS REVIEWS (starred review)

"A brilliantly-rendered portrait of the bond between endangered children, this compelling and evocative novel tells the truth, beautifully."
— Andrew Vachss

"This technically perfect, beautifully rendered childhood is what makes THE SNOWMAN'S CHILDREN so powerful. Mattie's parents . . . are perfectly believable, and his popular younger brother could step off the page and right into our living rooms. This is 'normal' American suburban life seen without cliches, a series of houses on a series of streets, where a series of parents try—or don't try—to make life safe for their kids."
— THE WASHINGTON POST

"Not since STAND BY ME has there been such a moving and penetrating portrait of the importance—and dangers—of friendships. THE SNOWMAN'S CHILDREN will not only grip your heart, but melt it as well."
— The Literary Guild

"Hirshberg deftly uses hints of magic realism to depict the wintry landscape of Mattie's remembered childhood. Everything from children's names. . . to the games they play. . . lends the book a sinister air of unreality. . . The novel may remind readers of Jeffrey Eugenides's THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, another eerie, nostalgic coming-of-age tale set in the 1970s Detroit suburbs."
— PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"Hirshberg holds the reader's interest from the first page to the last. He's as comfortable with loose ends as he is with life's realities. . . THE SNOWMAN'S CHILDREN holds the tension of a thriller combined with an insight into character more often found in literary than in genre fiction."
— Denver Post

"With this remarkable debut, Glen Hirshberg pinpoints that single fixed moment of youth in which lies the DNA of a life, and how finally we're all the ghosts of our own childhood."
— Steve Erickson

"This promising debut novel is weirdly tender. Even as a serial killer stalks his characters, Glen Hirshberg remembers that in-between age and his long-lost city with great depth and affection."
— Stewart O'Nan

" THE SNOWMAN'S CHILDREN ends with nothing and nobody unshattered, least of all the reader. Its world spins with a sad inexorability that is at once achingly familiar and disturbingly alien. The book is wise, intelligent, thick with arresting imagery, and infused with an accelerating gush of dread."
— Bryan Di Salvatore

"Glen Hirshberg, already an expert teller of ghost stories, has written a dark, haunting first novel that is a poignant and disquieting coming of age story."
— Ellen Datlow

"First novelist Hirshberg ... has a real gift for capturing the emotional power of childhood friendships."
— BOOKLIST