Ethan Between Us - Softcover

Anna Myers is the author of more than one dozen books for Walker & Company, including Tulsa Burning, a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, and Flying Blind, an Oklahoma Book Award finalist. Anna lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Gr. 7^-10. Clare and Liz have been best friends since kindergarten--two bright and ambitious girls in a tiny, small-minded Oklahoma oil town, the only ones dreaming of college and glamorous careers in the arts. Their soul-sustaining relationship is shaken when, on a hot July day in 1963, 17-year-old Ethan Bennington moves to town. A classical pianist of great promise, he is handsome, charming, caring, and intelligent. Both girls are attracted to him, but it is Clare, the would-be-writer, who becomes Ethan's girl and learns his terrible secret. Ethan is a schizophrenic, and although medication and shock treatments have helped him, he tells Clare that he can still hear the voice of the entity he says has taught him all he knows about the piano: Friedrich, a German boy who knew Brahms and who died before he could complete his masterful Forest Concerto. As Clare is drawn deeper into the mystery of Ethan's life and talent, her friendship with Liz falls apart, with tragic results. The plot is somewhat contrived and the final chapters hurried, but this is still a highly atmospheric teen romance with appealing characters and a hint of the supernatural--and, as short as it is, it makes a satisfying, quick read. Jean Franklin