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"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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