Where Things Come Back

The book Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley is about a seventeen year old boy named Cullen. Before Cullen’s senior year of high school, in the summer, he has many adventures, but also frightening ones too. Cullen’s cousin, Oslo, overdoses, his town, Lily, Arkansas, has gone completely mad over the reappearance of the extinct woodpecker, the “Lazarus,” or at least what John Barling thinks he seen, and his fifteen year old brother, Gabriel disappears unexpectedly. While Cullen is going through dramatic changes and alarming events, a discouraged missionary named Benton Sage has a lot of difficulties understanding what giving people food in Africa has anything to do with God and his destiny. After killing himself, Cabot Searcy, Benton’s