{"product_id":"the-gargoyle-hunters-isbn-9781101970904","title":"The Gargoyle Hunters","description":"\u003cp\u003eBoth his family and his city are crumbling when thirteen-year-old Griffin Watts stumbles headlong into his estranged father’s illicit architectural salvage business in 1970s Manhattan. Griffin clambers up the façades of tenements and skyscrapers to steal their nineteenth-century architectural sculptures—gargoyles and sea monsters, goddesses and kings. As his father sees it, these evocative creatures, crafted by immigrant artisans, are an endangered species in an age of sweeping urban renewal.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDesperate for money to help his artist mother keep their home, and yearning to connect with his father, Griffin fails to see that his father’s deepening obsession with preserving the treasures of Gilded Age New York endangers them all.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs he struggles to hold his family together and build a first love with his girlfriend on a sturdier foundation than his parents’ marriage, Griffin must learn to develop himself into the man he wants to become, and discern which parts of his life may be salvaged—and which parts must be let go.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHilarious and poignant, this critically acclaimed debut is both a vivid love letter to a vanishing city and an intimate portrait of father and son. And it solves the mystery of a stunningly brazen architectural heist—the theft of an entire landmark building—that made the front page of \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e in 1974. With writing both tender and powerful, \u003ci\u003eThe Gargoyle Hunters\u003c\/i\u003e brings a remarkable new voice to the canon of New York fiction.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA Barnes \u0026amp; Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick\u003cbr\u003eA \u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e Best New Adult Fiction of 2017 Pick\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Marvelously evocative … exuberant … eye-opening … [an] urban Indiana Jones-like escapade.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—The New York Times\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Gargoyle Hunters\u003c\/i\u003e is wonderful, strong, funny, with yards and yards of beautiful writing. Its pages are full of reading pleasures… Extraordinary.” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eAnnie Proulx, Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning author of \u003ci\u003eThe Shipping News\u003c\/i\u003e and \"Brokeback Mountain\"\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[An] unabashedly charming story …  What fantastic adventures these two have while creeping around and up New York buildings in the middle of the night, liberating ornaments that might fall by the wrecking ball tomorrow — or \u003ci\u003esomeday\u003c\/i\u003e. There’s no job too risky that Watts won’t send his son tiptoeing out on a crumbling ledge, or crawling across a sagging board, or even dangling from a fraying rope to rescue an endangered gargoyle 50 stories off the ground. Looking back, Griffin realizes these were not ‘reasonable things for a grown man to ask of a thirteen-year-old boy who wanted only to get close to him,’ but at the time, he was thrilled. And frankly, so are we.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Ron Charles, \u003ci\u003eWashington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A must-read book.\"\u003ci\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In the spirit of Jonathan Lethem and J. D. Salinger, John Freeman Gill strips the mask off New York City in this poignant, incisive, irreverent novel about fatherhood, art, obsession, creation, and destruction. This novel salvages so many things, not least our abiding relationship with the past. This is a wonderful, compelling debut.” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eColum McCann, National Book Award–winning author of \u003ci\u003eLet the Great World Spin\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eTransAtlantic\u003c\/i\u003e  \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“\u003c\/i\u003eJohn Freeman Gill's \u003ci\u003eThe Gargoyle Hunters \u003c\/i\u003eis a brilliant evocation of many things: the world of a thirteen-year-old boy, with its mixture of thoughtless destructiveness and wrenching emotion; a son’s relationship with a charismatic, architecture-loving, thieving father; the endless changes to timeless Manhattan during the crumbling, tumultuous 1970s. Funny, heartbreaking, elegiac, unforgettable—David Mitchell’s \u003ci\u003eBlack Swan Green\u003c\/i\u003e meets E. B. White’s \u003ci\u003eHere Is New York\u003c\/i\u003e.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eGretchen Rubin, #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e best-selling author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Happiness Project\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Gargoyle Hunters\u003c\/i\u003e is that rarest of all animals—a beautifully written literary novel that also just happens to be a rollicking, cinematic, ripsnortingly funny tale with action sequences as exciting as those of Hollywood’s best films. Ever wonder how a father and son could possibly steal an entire New York City building, cornice to curb? Here’s your chance to find out.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eDoug Liman, director of \u003ci\u003eThe Bourne Identity, Mr. \u0026amp; Mrs. Smith, \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eEdge of Tomorrow\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A stellar debut … Gill, who is a noted expert on historical architecture, brings a DeLillo-like eye for detail to his descriptions of the city while also perfectly capturing the father-son relationship in all its warmth, hero-worship, and, ultimately, disappointment. A bildungsroman rich with symbolism, wistful memory, and unabashed longing, this is a remarkably tender love letter to a city and historical fiction par excellence. For fans of Donna Tartt and Colum McCann.”\u003ci\u003e \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eBooklist, starred review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Seventies New York comes alive in \u003ci\u003eThe Gargoyle Hunters … \u003c\/i\u003e An ambitious, elegiac tale that gazes up at the greats … wholly original … There's more than enough page-turning action here for any reader to envision the movie adaptation, but back to the central virtue of this buzz-worthy book: the sentences. The screen can't capture those. … As Gill writes in the book's final chapter: ‘Any New Yorker who's paying attention will tell you that the city is a living, breathing organism at war with itself.’ Why do we stay? For stories like this.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—The Village Voice\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Extravagantly satisfying … It held me, delighted me, and left me enthralled. Teems with the particular vitality of its time and place, yet it is never for one minute especially ‘nostalgic.’ It is stamped with the moods of Manhattan … and the flavors of the mid-1970s, and yet it seems … delightfully and commandingly strange. And it reads, like all the best novels do, as both the encapsulation of private, urgent experience and a radical, inscrutable transformation of the same.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Los Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“People often say of New York, whenever you look up at the buildings, you’ll see something remarkable. You could say the same thing of the quality of the writing in \u003ci\u003eThe Gargoyle Hunters.\u003c\/i\u003e… What is perhaps most striking—and visible on every page … is just how accomplished and sophisticated Gill’s writing is.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eOmnivoracious: The Amazon Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“For those who treasure the dappled beauty of New York’s early modern buildings, the plight to protect each cornice and filigree from the scourge of redevelopment is a rather high-stakes drama. It is simple, then, to grasp why \u003ci\u003eThe Gargoyle Hunters \u003c\/i\u003ehas been received with such delight.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New Criterion\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Erudite, irreverent … With a fresh, wry narrative voice, Gill presents a vividly imagined slice of New York history, a quirky portrait of the 1970s and a tender father-son story--with plenty of gargoyles on the side.” \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Shelf Awareness\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Fast-paced … vividly portrayed … finely wrought … Gill’s affection for the city and the Seventies era is infectious.… The nail-biting, dramatic conclusion to the book … also includes a vertiginous trip to the tower atop the Woolworth Building for some misguided cultural preservation. If you suffer from vertigo skip this chapter. Its realistic description of dicing with death on the 53rd floor is not for the fainthearted.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—The Tribeca Trib\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Shortly into Gill’s captivating and exuberant novel, one realizes that architectural crimes are merely the backdrop. This is a story about all varieties of nostalgia. Formalized urban nostalgia, of course, of the kind that drives landmark preservation … but also the constant pining for recognizable moments in a person’s life, both for the pleasures of our childhood and for the relationships that once held us in safety.… The novel [is] filled with charming and very specific anecdotes of teenage exuberance and wistful remembrance, dotted along the corridors of 1970s New York that you can almost follow along with on a dusty map.” \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—The Bowery Boys\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"John Freeman Gill’s delightful, bittersweet story brings a lost metropolis of faded grandeur and raffish charm to brief, wondrous life.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—The Barnes \u0026amp; Noble Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Funny and touching… In much the same way that Donna Tartt and J. D. Salinger capture the city in their stories, Gill has made New York City one of his most vivid main characters. In mordant prose, he has taken a wrecking ball as much to the human heart as he has to the priceless gems of the city’s past.” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eMary Morris, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award–winning author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Jazz Palace\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"In turns quirky and cunning, naïve and knowing, achingly sad and subtly comic Gill conjures visuals that will fill your mind and family drama that will haunt you, a combination that leaves you longing to experience Griffin’s lost New York.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Nervous Breakdown\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Zounds. \u003ci\u003eThe Gargoyle Hunters\u003c\/i\u003e is one amazing novel about fatherhood, obsession, and of course, gargoyles.\"\u003ci\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eCaroline Leavitt, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e best-selling author of \u003ci\u003eIs This Tomorrow\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Fans of Richard Russo will appreciate the complex dynamic between needy, young Griffin and his father, whose breezy affability masks profound, even abusive, flaws.… The Gargoyle Hunters is an absorbing family tale and a wise meditation on aging.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBookPage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Delightfully readable.\" \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—DuJour magazine\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eJohn Freeman Gill \u003c\/b\u003eis the author of the novel \u003ci\u003eThe Gargoyle Hunters \u003c\/i\u003e(Knopf\/Vintage), a Barnes \u0026amp; Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. A native New Yorker, he is a former reporter for the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e City section. His work has been anthologized in \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book of New York\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eMore New York Stories: The Best of the City Section of The New York Times.\u003c\/i\u003e His writing has appeared in \u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post Book World, New York\u003c\/i\u003e magazine, \u003ci\u003eLiterary Hub, Salon, \u003c\/i\u003ethe \u003ci\u003eInternational Herald Tribune,\u003c\/i\u003e and elsewhere. A summa cum laude graduate of Yale University, where he won two prizes and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, he received an MFA in writing from Sarah Lawrence College. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, three children, and a smattering of gargoyles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eExcerpt \u003cbr\u003ePROLOGUE\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eGhosts of New York\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Why do we stay? Why do we members of this oddball tribe known as native New Yorkers stick around, decade upon decade, as so much of the city we love, the city that shaped us in all of our wiseacre, top-of-the-heap eccentricity, is razed and made unrecognizable around us?\u003cbr\u003e We are inured to so much bedlam here, so many exotic daily distractions, yet are somehow inexplicably surprised and pained every time a new wound opens up in the streetscape. We barely notice the shrieking ambulance whizzing past or the man in the octopus suit struggling to get all his arms through the turnstile, but let them tear down the Times Square Howard Johnson’s or Rizzoli or the Beekman Theatre, let them shutter H\u0026amp;H Bagels or the Moondance Diner or CBGB, and we wince as if our own limb has been severed.\u003cbr\u003e “There are too goddamned many ghosts here for me,” my big sister Quigley told me last year when she’d finally had enough and decided to leave town for good. “I’d rather miss New York from somewhere else than miss it from here.\"\u003cbr\u003e So why do I, whose ghosts are at least as obstreperous as hers, stay on? Why is this maddening, heartbreaking, self-cannibalizing city the only place where I feel like I’m me? \u003cbr\u003e And what about you? If you’ve lived in New York long enough to resent some gleaming new condo that pulled a \u003ci\u003eGodzilla vs. Bambi\u003c\/i\u003e on a favorite restaurant or deli or bookstore, then this is your city too, teeming with your own bespoke ghosts. \u003cbr\u003e As for me and mine, most of the things I need to tell you about happened in the ’70s. But it was in 1965, when I was just about to turn five, that I first sensed what it is to love a city that never loves you back enough.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e We were not even in New York at the time. We were in our VW Bug, taking a predawn road trip to a mystery destination my father refused to reveal.\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eIt was the sharp left turn at the slaughterhouse that awakened me, the momentum burrowing my head deeper into the ribbed warmth of his corduroy armpit. Out the window of our little car, in a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t pocket of yellow light, men in blood-smeared smocks hosed down the pavement, clouds of steam rising into the night. On a wide brick wall, our headlights gliding across it, the faded image of a grinning cartoon cow, its speech bubble saying, “Pleased to Meet You! Meat to Please You!” \u003cbr\u003e We drove on another few minutes, the world still more dark than light. Mom and Quigley murmured groggily in the back seat. When we reached an enchanted point along the highway that looked exactly the same to me as every other part of the highway, Dad pulled off decisively and parked in a marshy softness. Another few cars, three or four, followed his lead, but Dad headed off on foot without hailing or waiting for the others. He preferred to make people keep up with him.\u003cbr\u003e The marsh grasses were just the right height to keep hitting me in the face as we walked, and I didn’t much like the way the soggy ground sucked at my Keds. So Dad hoisted me up and let me doze on his shoulder, slobbering contentedly on the rise of muscle beneath his shirt. I was part of him, my whole limp body lifting and subsiding with his breaths. When I opened my eyes again, the darkness had thinned and we were moving through a shadow landscape strewn with hulking, oblong shapes. They loomed all around us, tilting this way and that, one across the other like gargantuan pick-up-stix. The ground crunched beneath Dad’s feet as he picked his way carefully over the treacherous terrain, his broad hand flat against my back. The air smelled burnt.\u003cbr\u003e Daylight was seeping into the sky now from the marsh’s edge, faster every moment, until at last the colossal tilted shadows around us resolved themselves into the grand ruined forms of classical columns, dozens of them, toppled and smashed and abandoned here in an empire of rubble. Dad put me down. We were standing amid the wreckage of some magnificent lost civilization — even I, the runt of the party, could see that. And we were going to have a picnic.\u003cbr\u003e Dad set a wicker basket on the ground, and Mom pulled out a red-and-white-checked tablecloth, which she spread on a broken cylinder of stone, a column section only a bit higher than our round kitchen table back in the city. Their friends, the rest of our extended clan, were beginning to straggle up now, picking their way across the majestic junkyard, huge goofy smiles on their faces as they took in their surroundings.\u003cbr\u003e  There was a lot to see, crushed bricks and tortured iron railings and enormous fragments of pink-white stone carved in the shapes of leaves and scrolls. Here and there, the place was smoldering, ribbons of smoke curling skyward from the debris. Poking diagonally from a rubble pile, not far from Mom’s makeshift picnic table, was a woman’s white, intricately veined stone arm, its middle and ring fingers snapped off at the second knuckle.\u003cbr\u003e It was a terrific party. Quig and a couple of other big kids ran around and hopped from column to column, their arms outstretched for balance. A lanky bearded guy plucked at a guitar with silver claws. Mom, dark-eyed and grinning, wearing a short white sweater-dress cinched at the waist with a yellow scarf, handed round mismatched cups — some old freebie Mets glasses from the Polo Grounds and a bunch of those little mugs her favorite mustard came in. At the center of it all was Dad, the unmistakable leader of the expedition, pouring out the red wine, slicing hunks of chorizo, tossing people astonishingly sweet figs he’d found in Little Italy.\u003cbr\u003e It was really something being his little guy. I was the smallest one here by far, but I was the princeling, sitting right beside him, basking in his reflected glow and helping him open wine bottles with a corkscrew that looked like a man doing jumping jacks. Everyone looked our way, vied for his attention. People ruffled my hair.\u003cbr\u003e Something important had been left behind in one of the cars, a casserole or a cooler. Mom headed back to get it. The silver-claw guy put down his guitar to go help. Someone started tossing around a Frisbee.\u003cbr\u003e The grown-ups had a lot to talk about. They wandered among the ruins in groups of two or three, prodding half-buried objects with their shoe tips and venturing opinions. Dad was the only one who’d been here before. He led me and a married couple with matching curly hair along a road rutted with truck tracks, left and then right and then left, until he found what he was looking for: the biggest clock face I’d ever seen, jutting slantwise from a rubble heap like a crash-landed flying saucer. It was a great white disc with elegant, black-metal letters around its edge in the places the numbers should have been: \u003ci\u003eI’\u003c\/i\u003es mostly, with a few \u003ci\u003eV’\u003c\/i\u003es and \u003ci\u003eX’\u003c\/i\u003es mixed in. It had no hands.\u003cbr\u003e Dad climbed up the rubble slope to the clock and took from his back pocket a vise grip, a pair of shiny locking pliers whose teeth always suggested to me the polished grin of an alligator. He adjusted its bite by turning a knob on one of the handles, then locked its teeth onto a letter \u003ci\u003eI\u003c\/i\u003e: the only one all by itself.\u003cbr\u003e  “See if you can’t snap that off to give to your mother,” he told me. “I can drill a hole in the top to run a chain through as a necklace.” Mom’s name was Ivy.\u003cbr\u003e Half-buried along the flank of the rubble pile was what appeared to be the feathered stone wing of an eagle. Using its slant surface as a ramp, I clambered onto the clock, which was about twice my height. The clock had two black-metal rings, one inside the other, running around the periphery of its face, almost like a circular toy-train track. Suspended between these two tracks were the letters. They were cold and a little sharp in my palms, but they made pretty good handholds, and I climbed cautiously up the clock’s curved edge to the letter \u003ci\u003eI\u003c\/i\u003e on which Dad had clamped the vise grip. Up close, I could see that the \u003ci\u003eI\u003c\/i\u003e had been attached to the metal rings at top and bottom, until someone — Dad, surely, when he’d been here before — had sawed it loose at the top. All that was left to do was to wiggle the vise grip back and forth until the letter \u003ci\u003eI\u003c\/i\u003e snapped free at the bottom.\u003cbr\u003e Holding the tool with both hands, I rotated my wrists, left-right, left-right, while Dad explained to the curly-haired couple just how tricky it had been to find this dumping ground here on the other side of the Hudson: something about how the railroad’s Jersey-based wreckers — “Lipsett’s guys,” he called them — were keeping the location on the down-low, for safety reasons. My wrists were starting to get awfully sore, and after a while I complained to Dad, who excused himself to come help me. \u003cbr\u003e My hands inside his, Dad took hold of the vise grip and worked it vigorously back and forth, then pretended to get tired out so I could give it the triumphant final twist all by myself. Off popped that stubborn letter \u003ci\u003eI,\u003c\/i\u003e right into my palm. It was cool along most of its length but hot where it had just broken loose. I couldn’t wait to give it to Mom. I knew she’d love it.\u003cbr\u003e Together Dad and I started making our way back, taking care not to trip over a \u003cbr\u003e felled black post marked TRACK 3. But we’d gone so far, and everything was so wildly disordered here, that I wasn’t sure how we would find the right route. One junk pile looked like another, and the truck roads running every which way all looked alike too, and all the heaped debris and stone columns made it hard to see more than ten or fifteen feet in front of us. Still, Dad looked as handsome and as sure of himself as ever, and I loved roaming this broken landscape with him, no one around but us, the world’s two greatest living explorers conquering the unknown side by side.\u003cbr\u003e Snatches of sound came to us now and then, the squawking of seagulls and the distant rumble of machinery layered upon the crunch of our footfalls. Dad kept up a steady pace, his usual certainty of gait, until an unfamiliar hesitation in his step, somewhere between a hitch and a stumble, caused me to stop and look up at him, at his face, where I saw at once that something had changed. He wore a look of weakness, of panic almost, that I’d never seen before. I followed his gaze, stared at the same debris he was staring at, but saw nothing, nothing but a hill of scarred rubble and several long shiny marble rectangles — the shoe-burnished steps of a grand staircase, maybe.\u003cbr\u003e Then I saw it. Amid a contortion of brass that might once have been a banister, Mom’s yellow scarf had wrapped itself around a bent post. From somewhere behind it, how far away I couldn’t tell, I thought I heard her laughter, a gasping stifled giggle. It was a joyous sound, but self-strangled somehow, shushed. I watched a long moment, hoping to spot something I could understand, but saw only my mother’s scarf wavering in the breeze, delicate and almost see-through now that it was no longer bunched at her waist.\u003cbr\u003e When I looked up, to learn from my father’s face how to feel, I discovered something new. My father was no longer beside me.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301536878821,"sku":"NP9781101970904","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781101970904.jpg?v=1767739474","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-gargoyle-hunters-isbn-9781101970904","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}