The Winnowing 12+
About this book
In a world where the familiar has sinister undertones, two friends are torn apart just when they need one another most. Can they both survive?
Marivic Stone lives in a small world, and that's fine with her. Home is with her beloved grandfather in a small town that just happens to be famous for a medical discovery that saved humankind — though not without significant repercussions. Marivic loves her best friend, Saren, and the two of them promise to stick together, through thick and thin, and especially through the uncertain winnowing procedure, a now inevitable — but dangerous — part of adolescence.
But when tragedy separates the two friends, Marivic is thrust into a world of conspiracy, rebellion and revolution. For the first time in her life, Marivic is forced to think and act big. If she is going to avenge Saren and right a decade of wrongs, she will need to trust her own frightening new abilities, even when it meansturning her back on everything, and everyone, she's known and loved. A gripping exploration of growing up, love and loss, The Winnowing is a page-turning adventure that will have readers rooting for their new hero, Marivic Stone, as they unravel the horror and intrigue of a world at once familiar but with a chilling strangeness lurking beneath the everyday.
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A Note from Vikki VanSickle
On Friday nights in grade seven you could find me in the basement, in the dark, watching The X-Files. Conspiracy theories? Loved them. Alternate histories? Couldn’t get enough. My obsession culminated in a friend and me attending an X-Files convention wearing FBI badges made in Microsoft Paint — hers said Mulder, mine said Scully — at which I got up in front of a conference room full of much older “X‑Philes” and a panel of screenwriters to pitch my idea for an episode.
At first glance, The Winnowing might seem at odds with my previous work. Essentially I’m exploring my perennial themes — relationships, coming of age — set in a world that could have been. I’m interested in what ordinary people do in extraordinary situations. What if you don’t want to save the world, you just want to save your friend? The Winnowing is a love letter to The X-Files and the worlds and concepts that show opened up for me. But it’s also about the everyday, inescapable conflicts of adolescence: fighting with your best friend, working with your arch-nemesis, worrying about your appearance and wondering where you fit in the world.
Oh, and that X-Files pitch session I entered back in 1995? I won.
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