Found in the walls of a castle as a baby, Prince Alphonsus hides a secret — a clock ticks in his chest where his heart should beat.
Esme, a young magician, has been sent to kill her mother, a powerful sorceress confined to a magical woods.
Their paths cross in the Hinterlands, a wasteland filled with monsters. Esme seeks a giant stone maiden with a clock for a heart. Alphonsus seeks the clockmaker who created him, as he flees an insurrection, fomented by fear of the qualities that make him different.
Brian Farrey, a Minnesota Book Award winner, starts his second middle-grade novel slowly, as villagers living on the edge of the Hinterlands reckon with the mysterious arrival of the onyx maiden.
But once story — and statue — lurch into motion, Esme and Alphonsus find themselves tested as they flee a power-hungry palace official, an army stirred up by fear and monsters set loose by past magic.
Esme must unravel the lies about her past and discover who she is without her magic, while Alphonsus must face his deepest fears in Farrey's moving story of young people grappling with self-knowledge.
The Counterclockwise Heart
By: Brian Farrey.
Publisher: Algonquin Books for Young Readers, 352 pages, ages 8-12, $17.95.
Event: Book launch, 7 p.m. Feb. 1, Red Balloon, 891 Grand Av., St. Paul.