Backtracked

by Pedro de Alcantara

Overview

Tommy Latrella is haunted by the ghost of his “perfect” older brother, who died on 9/11. Unable to live up to Jimmy’s memory, Tommy spends countless hours riding the subway and “tagging” the stations with graffiti. But when Tommy plays a dangerous prank in the Times Square station, the subway turns on him, and Tommy is hurtled back in time.

As Tommy travels, he experiences the hardships faced by the New Yorkers that preceded him, and gains perspective on his own comfortable life. But will he ever be able to get back to 2006? Tommy is desperate to mend his ways and get back home, but the trains may have other plans for him. . . .

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375892004
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	03/10/2009
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	12 Years

About the Author

Pedro de Alcantara is a Brazilian musician who lives in Paris and travels the world teaching the Alexander Technique, a method that improves habits of movement and thought in everyday activities. His first novel for young readers, Befiddled, is available from Yearling.

Editorial Reviews

Hoping to escape the shadow of his older brother, a dead 9/11 hero, 15-year-old Tommy Latrella runs away from his Brooklyn home. Instead of ending up on a bus to Las Vegas, however, he falls through a mysterious and never-explained time portal and lands in 1918. Without money or a home, he is taken in by an Italian family and works a construction job in what later becomes the NYC subway system. From 1918, Latrella (which he prefers to Tommy) falls into 1932, where he escapes homelessness as a Mafia recruit. Another portal takes him to 1942, where he enlists in the Army. Saving a friend's life brings him back to 2006. Historical details swamp the plot: De Alcantara's use of the subway as Latrella's touchstone overwhelms human character development with an alphabet soup of antique train lines. Latrella has good intentions but lacks personality, clunking back and forth in unfinished story lines with unrealistic dialogue, and the secondary characters are just paper-thin caricatures. The all-too-predictable end wraps up in a lesson about the importance of history and family. (Fantasy. YA)

Kirkus Reviews