By Robert McCammon
The Book
 The year is 1964. On a cold spring morning before the sun,
Cory Mackenson is accompanying his father on his milk
delivery route. Without warning a car appears in the road
before them and plunges into a lake some say is bottomless.
Cory's father makes a desperate attempt to save the driver,
but instead comes face-to-face with a vision that will haunt
and torment him: a dead man handcuffed to the steering
wheel, naked and savagely beaten, a copper wire knotted
around his neck. The lake's depths claim the car and the
corpse, but the murderer's work is unfinished as, from that
moment, both Cory and his father begin searching for the
truth.
The Book
 The small town of Zephyr, Alabama, has been an idyllic
home for Cory and his friends. But now, the murder of an
unknown man who lies in the dark lake, his tortured soul
crying out for justice, causes Cory's life to explode into a
kaleidoscope of clues and deepening puzzles. His quest to
understand the forces of good and evil at work in his
hometown leads him through a maze of dangers and
fascinations: the vicious Blaycock clan, who defend their
nefarious backwoods trades with the barrels of their guns;
a secret assembly of men united by racial hatred; a onehundred-six-year-old black woman named the Lady who
conjures snakes and hears voices of the dead; a reptilian
thing that swims in the belly of a river; and a bicycle with a
golden eye.
The Book
 As Cory searches for a killer, he learns more about the
meaning of both life and death. A single green feather
leads him deeper into the mystery, and soon he
realizes not only his life, but the sanity of his father
may hang in the balance.
The Book
 Welcome to the imagination of Robert R. McCammon,
the New York Times bestselling author who now takes
us on a whirlwind voyage into the realm where
innocence and evil are on a collision course. Boy's Life
is a tour de force of magic and wonder, a journey that is
at once joyful, unrelentingly mysterious, and
hauntingly poignant.
Questions to think about
 What was life in the South like in 1964?
 Do you remember your childhood? What did you
play? Who were your friends? Did you have a crush on
someone? Did someone have a crush on you? What
did you think of your parents? Were there bullies in
your neighborhood?
Terms to know
 Protagonist
 First Person Point of View
 Analogy
 Omniscient Point of View
 Person vs. Self
 Inciting Incident
 Narrative Writing
 Allusion
 Exposition
Look for these things in the reading
 Cory Mackenson
 Zephyr, Alabama
 Ben Sears
 Miss Grace
 Tom Mackenson
 Invaders from Mars
 Granddaddy Jaybird
 Rebecca Mackenson
 Tattoo
Look for these things
 Green Feather
 The Lyric
 1964
 Donny Blaylock
 Tarzan
 Saxon’s Lake