Fascinating Mystical YA Novel

Gnosticism is the belief that the material world should be shunned in favor of the spiritual world. With that theme in mind, Michael Sussman created a brilliant YA novel, Crashing Eden.

Joss, a self-described “seventeen-year-old punk” bullied his brother unmercifully until a neighbor took over the chore. Not surprisingly, Eli, a middle school student, hung himself in his brother’s closet. In a revengeful rage, Joss burned down the neighbor’s house disfiguring the neighbor’s sister, Alessa. The novel opens with Joss recently returned from juvie. Though he’s trying to turn his life around, it’s tough with bickering parents and relentless depression. All things change when Joss runs into a park car’s opened door while riding his bicycle without a helmet. The teen ends up in the ER of a Boston hospital with the unique ability of hearing a weird “OM” sound.

The young woman, whose car Joss wacked, visits the teen’s hospital bed. When Joss reports to Shakti the sound he’s hearing, she believes he’s tapped into the Shankman Frequency, the heavenly channel piping in the sounds of heaven. Shakti, a graduate student at Harvard University and her boyfriend are developing a device that would enable the listener to hear the “OM” from heaven, a sound that brings the individual instant peace and contentment. This young couple wants everyone to be able to crash Eden.

In an easy reading style that YA readers love, Sussman has created a quick page-turner novel that will keep his readers riveted from the first to last page. Throughout it all we watch Joss mature as he tries to overcome obstacles that may lead to the end-of-times.

About the Author

Born in Lexington, Massachusetts, Michael Sussman was the son of two microbiologists and grew up in the womb of a loving community. He attended Antioch College in Ohio, worked many odd jobs including dishwasher, landscaper, and street musician. In graduate school he become a clinical psychologist.

When Dr. Sussman is not counseling patients, he’s a clinical instructor at Harvard University. Crashing Eden is his first YA novel.

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