Description: The year is 1968, and twelve-year-old Rachel Finch is finding that life in Teaneck, New Jersey, is getting more complicated every day. The school board has just voted to integrate the high school, stirring up unsettling reactions in the community; her homelife with an overbearing father, nervous mother, and rebellious sister is also astir with inexplicable rumblings; and debilitating bouts of asthma only increase Rachel's sense of powerlessness. Reading--and discussing the wonders of the Dewey decimal system with a like-minded friend--offers an escape from the pressures of everyday life. But there is nothing as glorious and empowering as her nightly excursions with S-Man, the superhero who escorts her across time and space to lend a helping hand to Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Chinua Achebe, and other famous authors struggling with writer's block. Weaving the threads of Rachel's two lives with a sure hand and a boundless imagination, Beth Bosworth creates a coming-of-age story that is at once boldly fanciful and sweetly down-to-earth.

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