Where Things come back is a novel published in the year 2011 by the American author John Corey Whaley. The novel is characterized as being a novel for young adults and it quickly became popular. The author even was awarded the Printz Award in 2012 for Where Things Come Back.
The action of the novel takes place in a small city in Arkansas and the main character is a young man named Cullen Witter. Cullen’s younger brother disappears but no one seems to notice his absence as they are too busy with the reappearance in the town of a woodpecker thought to have disappeared.
The novel is considered as being a coming of age story as Cullen transforms into an adult in the pages of the novel. Cullen discovers who he is as a person and who he wants to become and he tries to find his place in a world that seems to not care about anything.
Among the themes discussed in the novel are family, lust, isolation and coming of age making the novel be a complex one and an interesting novel to read.
