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'The Snowman's Children'
Oakland County child killings inspire
former Detroiter's first novel.
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Special to the Jewish News
and function in the world," says
Hirshberg, 36, chair of a high school
humanities department in Los
Angeles.
"A lot of the struggles that all three
of the main characters go through are
things that I certainly experienced,
but none is directly autobiographical,"
he says.
The Snowman's Children, which is
written from the point of view of an
adult remembering his 11th year, fol-
lows the friendship of three offbeat
children and weaves back and forth
from present to past.
In the book, two of the children
make up a lie about the killer to try to
rescue their friend from the grasp of
len Hirshberg, now living
in California, remembers
his 11th year in Michigan
as one of the most dramat-
ic of his life. It was the year when the
"Oakland County child killer," never
caught or identified, spread fear
throughout suburban Detroit in the
late 1970s.
Hirshberg, then a student at George
P. Way Elementary School in
Bloomfield Hills, recalls the many
assemblies where police officers taught
self-protection. Also an Adat Shalom
Synagogue bar mitzvah student at the
time, he recollects
the close scrutiny
after school, when
he and his class-
What she knew was that the Cory twins, age 11, had
mates waited for
been standing in a parking lot outside a comic book
the Hebrew school
shop in downtown Birmingham, talking to a long-
bus.
haired man. The shop was less than a hundred yards
An event many
from their house, and they walked there every day.
years later, when he
She had seen the two boys climb willingly, as far
was in college, gave
as she could tell — into the long-haired man's car. One
rise to an idea for a
kid had held up the seat so that his twin brother could
book with a similar
climb in the back, while the long-haired man stood on
mystery. During a
the other side of the car and grinned.
reunion with col-
The car itself was rusted almost all the way through
lege friends from
along the molding. The police gave her photos of various
his time at the
models, and she identified one instantly: a blue Gremlin.
University of
Michigan, the life-
from "The Snowman's Children," by Glen Hirshberg
long writer was fas-
cinated by conversa-
mental illness, resulting in drastic
tions dominated by the murders of
consequences for all otthem.
the past, and wanted to express in
"I very consciously decided to write
writing the emotions he heard spoken
the book before doing additional
by his buddies.
research on what happened with the
The idea came to fruition in The
actual investigation," says Hirshberg,
Snowman's Children (Carroll & Graf
who regularly writes for alternative
Publishers; $24), Hirshberg's first
newspapers and has been nominated
novel. The plot brings a fictional
for the World Fantasy Award in con-
killer into Oakland County and cre-
nection with rwo novellas.
ates some new circumstances in famil-
"I wanted to write it strictly from
iar territory.
the perspective of my memories as an
The author will return to Michigan
11-year-old. Later, I went back to get
Feb. 24 and 25 to read from his book
more facts and decide which ones I
at two Borders locations, in Ann
would change and present as imagi-
Arbor and Taylor.
nary according to the needs of the
story I was telling.
From A Child's Perspective
"The eeriest thing is that they still
don't know who the actual killer was,
"At the time of the killings, I was a
and that has left a ghostly figure as I
shy, geeky kid, learning how to nego-
think about my childhood.
tiate friendship and how to survive
An Excerpt ms.
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