First published 2023
Jamie O'Neill sees the world differently. The thirteen-year-old loves red things, tall trees, and the patterns he finds everywhere around him. He carries books with their dust jackets intact and thinks about Edgar Allan Poe. Most of all, Jamie wants to build a Perpetual Motion Machine. He believes this invention will somehow let him reach his mother Noelle, who died giving birth to him. When Jamie starts at a new school, everything feels wrong and too much. But he meets two teachers, Tess and Tadhg, who see something special in his strange project. As Jamie works on his impossible machine, his determination begins changing everyone around him. His teachers find their own lives shifting. The whole community gets pulled into his mission. Jamie discovers that the biggest adventures require other people, and that connection works in ways he never expected.
Genres: family-life, adventure, coming-of-age, contemporary
Vibes: intimate, thought-provoking, whimsical
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
298 pages · Kindle Edition · Vintage Digital