James Sneddon has mixed a coming-of-age story with the dark fantastic in his first novel, "The Tolltaker," in which a young boy comes to terms with death, grief, and the unknown. Eight-year-old Bobby Burke doesn't want to move out of his grandparents' house into an apartment downstairs from Nick Madonna, his mother's new "friend." Bobby just wants his father to return from Vietnam where he's been missing-in-action for the past three years. Despite everyone around him wanting him to believe his father isn't coming home, Bobby knows they don't understand the magic of his SafeKeeper, a talisman that keeps his father alive as long as it remains on Bobby's wrist. At school Bobby struggles against the tolltaker of the playground, Rudy, who expects Bobby to pay a toll for passing through. But Bobby finds that his greatest battle will take place in the storm drain behind his apartment, where he meets the real Tolltaker. A figure that enshrouds itself with a black cloud visits Bobby in his dreams, and demands the ultimate price of passage from Bobby: his father's life! And this Tolltaker is inescapable . . .
James Sneddon grew up in northeast Philadelphia. He currently lives in south-central Pennsylvania where he is working on his next novel.
