THE PRODIGY
About
The Prodigy explores the parallel lives of a mother and daughter in the twenty-first century with their ancestors of the nineteenth-century. In 2016, fifteen-year-old U.S. National Champion figure skater Jackie Ellis is among the favorites to win the World Championships in Boston. Her mother, Anne, a failed Olympian, coached her daughter’s inexplicable rise to the pinnacle of the sport. But Jackie’s near-perfect performance comes to a devastating halt when she fails to execute a difficult jump and crashes to the ice, suffering a traumatic brain injury.
When Anne’s daughter regains consciousness, she’s confused and seems to be in another era. She doesn’t even recognize her mother. She speaks of the distant past as if it’s the present and is fluent in Norwegian, a language she’s never learned. Somehow, she masters the piano without a single lesson. Anne soon suspects her daughter is experiencing more than a physical injury. Are Jackie’s transcendent abilities merely the result of her traumatic accident, or is someone or something from the past possessing her?
After the accident, the confused girl vaguely remembers a life of a gifted figure skater who died young in the nineteenth century, leaving behind an obsessive mother who haunted and controlled the Ellis family for over one-hundred years. As Anne confronts the echoes of a painful past that still reverberates through the family’s ancestral home, she begins to fear that she has unwittingly played a role in creating The Prodigy.
Praise for this book
Wow, what a journey it has been! First off, let me say, I'm genuinely impressed! Your plot is something else – truly unique, and the way you've managed to intertwine those complex themes? Absolutely commendable.
I genuinely enjoyed reading your book. Honestly, like you mentioned, I've never read anything quite like it before!
I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Prodigy by Tom Stevens. An intricate plot involving several generations and plenty of Colorado history, it keeps readers on the edge of their seats right up until the end. Intriguing and suspenseful without being scary, and lots of emotional range. For someone who has lived in the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado for more than 25 years, it was fun reading a story set in Aspen, Leadville and Colorado Springs, among other locales. Having visited many of the locations in the book, I could really visualize the story in my mind. This is a great book for people who live in or have been to Colorado (especially Aspen), but with universal themes of family, parenting, and unfulfilled dreams, it can be enjoyed by anyone. It would make a good film or limited-run television series."