About the Book: Where Things Come Back
Just when seventeen-year-old Cullen Witter thinks he understands everything
about his small and painfully dull Arkansas town, it all disappears. . . . In
the summer before Cullens senior year, a nominally-depressed birdwatcher named
John Barling thinks he spots a species of woodpecker thought to be extinct since
the 1940s in Lily, Arkansas. His rediscovery of the so-called Lazarus Woodpecker
sparks a flurry of press and woodpecker-mania. Soon all the kids are getting
woodpecker haircuts and everyones eating "Lazarus burgers." But as absurd as the
towns carnival atmosphere has become, nothing is more startling than the
realization that Cullens sensitive, gifted