ST. MICHAEL’S SCALES

Patron saint of the sick and patron saint of battle, St. Michael stands at the gate to Heaven, judging people’s lives and weighing the worth of their souls. “Lately I’ve been thinking about those scales,” says 15-year-old Keegan Flannery, and he concludes, “I had nothing—my side of the scales was all but empty.” He feels his life is empty, he has done nothing of worth for family or friends. Keegan’s twin brother Michael died at birth, and ever since, Keegan has felt responsible and guilty for the death and for the family dissolution carried in its wake. To atone, he is planning a suicide when he turns 16, a desperate attempt at forgiveness, absolution, and salvation. This debut novelist succeeds brilliantly at putting readers in to the disturbed and tortured mind of its lonely protagonist. They will experience kaleidoscopic mental images of Heaven and Hell, birth and death, gargoyles, angels, saints, and Frankenstein as Keegan tries to make a life—and death—for himself. Wrestling for Our Lady of Perpetual Help High School becomes his means of doing penance through pain. The title of the novel is a clever play on St. Michael’s scales and the scales in the locker room, representing Keegan’s desire to measure up for patron saint and coach. In a beautifully wrought final wrestling scene—an image of resurrection—Keegan realizes he has found himself, his place, his voice. He realizes he wasn’t so much seeking a way to die but a way to live, and that his prayers might better have been for guidance than for death or release. Keegan has found his own voice for his side of St. Michael’s scales. A richly layered, thought-provoking novel of how one boy learns to make weight. (Fiction. 14+)