Rotters by Daniel Kraus

Joey’s whole life changed the day his mother was hit by a city bus and killed. Joey had lived a sheltered, protected life with his mom in Chicago focused on getting good grades and playing jazz on his trumpet. After her death, Joey is sent to live with his father, a mysterious man known in his local community as the Garbage man. Joey’s misery in this new version of his life is complete. Abused by his new classmates and teachers alike, Joey finds no sympathy, in fact, no interaction with his father at all. Joey is forced to walk miles to school. He eats nothing for days and sleeps on the floor of a strange shack with neither television nor phone service. Joey comes to discover his father’s trade. His father is part of a hidden community of Diggers, people who rob graves secretly in the middle of the night. Over time, his father accepts him as an apprentice. Joey learns the family trade, and accepts the rules of a secret society of Diggers. Joey becomes engaged in a continuously more perilous journey that entangles him in a brutal family rivalry, dangerous feuds, exposes him to the risk of detection, threatens his life and costs him three fingers. Overall, Joey will learn a power before unknown.

  

This book was by turns both brutal and mesmerizing. It is horrific. But truly, the most frightening thing about this story isn’t the disruption of graves, or people being hunted in the dark. What is truly most terrifying about this book is the brutal way people treat each other. In the current literary frenzy of zombies, vampires, werewolves, and monster hunters, this book looks at the monsters that live inside of us: the craving for acceptance, the desire for power, the ability to influence others. Rotters explores relationships between Joey and is classmates (brutal and humiliating) his teachers (adversaries and mentors alike) and explores an ever changing relationship with a father he has only just recently met. Joey’s descent into emotional disaster is swift. But what rings true is his strength of spirit. Joey’s character arc is strong and ultimately satisfying. Rotters is a frightening look at both human nature and humanity. Joey passes through a gruesome, terrifying, burning cauldron to discover his own worth and his own humanity. The ride is by turns thrilling, terrifying, and haunting.

Rotters strikes familiar chords. While Rotters is tale all its own, readers may want to read other books with similar themes. Joey's complete isolation as a social outcast is similar to that felt by Xing in Crossing. The theme of music mingles through Rotters like it does in Crossing, Ten Miles Past Normal and Revolution. Joey’s obsessing with details in moments of stress, termed "specifying" by his mother and accepted as part of him connects with Kendall's OCD in Cryer’s Cross.