petergraves

Judge A Book By Its Cover

Book Reviews and Synopses

Peter Graves

William Pene du Bois

Pene du Bois, William. Peter Graves. Viking Press. New York, New York. 1950.

Peter Graves is a Science-fiction book, that is suspenseful, and will take the reader on a quest, It is written by the largely unknown author William Pene du Bois. Its contents are controversial and a bit rushed at times, but it has a story that makes you want to finish.

Peter Graves is about a teenager named Peter Graves who is very distraught by the death of his grandfather who he was very close to. Peter dropped into a depression and gradually became a loner. To occupy the long hours spent without anyone to talk to, or interact with, he started tinkering with all sorts of different chemicals in the chemistry lab. Eventually he realized that he was skilled in chemical science.

Using his new found skills he became able to start doing excellent in school and was able to relax and take life easy. Gradually his grades increased, his popularity rose, and he started getting accepted in to colleges and having a better overall life. As his life started becoming better he started to want more and more out of it. Once he got to this point in his life he remembered why he was able to improve his life so much. His grandfather.

After making this realization he started tinkering in his school chemistry lab. He was trying to make a chemical compound that would give life to somebody long deceased . After a long quarter of going into his school at night and stealing chemicals from the chem lab, he started getting somewhere in his experiments. After many failed attempts at returning his grandfather’s body back to life, he continued heading in the right direction. But once he “completed” his experiment, his grandfather walked out of a yellow cloud, looked around, and disappeared...

William’s controversial book Peter Graves had been absorbed by readers for the years it has been published. Despite its obvious faults including bad writing and rushing the storyline, It has a shocking story, that can be enjoyed by some.

3 out of 5 stars

Contributed by B. Prather-Huff