Gramp

A young boy sees the thoughts and emotions of everyone around him as vivid mental pictures. It's a gift that makes him a stranger in his own family, until he turns it on Gramp. What he finds there becomes the only way to truly know the man he's loved all his life: the memories, the regrets, the quiet tenderness hidden behind a gruff exterior. But Gramp is aging, and the pictures are growing harder to read. This is a story about the distance between generations and the impossible wish to cross it. De Vet writes with delicate restraint, letting the science-fiction premise serve what is ultimately a tender, bittersweet meditation on love, loss, and what we can never quite say to the people who matter most. The ending lingers, quiet and devastating, long after the final page.