Seventeen-year-old Aidan Lockwood lives in the sleepy farming community of Temperance, Ohio--known for its cattle ranches and not much else. That is until Jarrod, a friend he hasn't seen in five years, moves back to town and opens Aidan's eyes in startling ways: to Aidan's ability to see the spirit world; to the red-bearded specter of Death; to a family curse that has claimed the lives of the Lockwood men one by one...and to the new feelings he has developed for Jarrod.

Christopher Barzak's fiction includes the award-winning adult novel One for Sorrow, which was made into the major motion picture Jamie Marks Is Dead; the Nebula Award finalist The Love We Share Without Knowing; and the short-story collection Before and Afterlives, which won the Shirley Jackson Award. Christopher grew up in rural Ohio, has lived in a Southern California beach town and the capital of Michigan, and has taught English outside of Tokyo. Currently he teaches fiction writing in the Northeast Ohio MFA program at Youngstown State University.