The Gift

In 1950s America, a twelve-year-old boy named Carl Sloan can heal the sick and mend broken bones with a touch. Instead of reverence, society offers him persecution. The miraculous has always frightened humanity, and Carl is no exception to the rule that prophets are stoned in their own lands. The novel unfolds in a courtroom where Carl's extraordinary life is laid bare for judgment. We learn how a child blessed with the ability to save lives became a threat to be feared, a freak to be examined, a problem to be solved. The healer's own past becomes the evidence against him, and the question is no longer what he can do, but whether he will be allowed to do it at all. This is science fiction at its most human: not about rockets or aliens, but about the oldest terror of all, the fear of what we do not understand. Sturgis writes with quiet conviction about a world that would rather destroy a miracle than admit it exists. The Gift endures because it asks what we have always asked about the different among us: safety or compassion, fear or love.