The Night Gwen Stacy Died

“Part tangled love story and part love affair with comics . . . centers on that tenuous bit of time between childhood and adulthood, when anything seems possible.” —Library Journal

Sheila Gower will do anything to get away from small-town nowhere Iowa and her dead-end swing-shift job at a gas station. Right now, all she has is her dreams. So does the cute young stranger who calls himself Peter Parker—a daredevil cabdriver with an immersive Spider-Man obsession, a gun, and a plan: They’ll fake a kidnapping, empty the register, and head for Chicago to complete a mysterious mission. Sheila thinks it’s a marvel of an idea. Until the colorful rush of their fantasy getaway collides with reality.
 
“The literary equivalent of a pop music mashup . . . Inspired by ‘Spider-Man,’ Westerns, coming-of-age novels and Bonnie and Clyde” (Chicago Tribune), The Night Gwen Stacy Died is both “superbly suspenseful” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) and “sweetly eccentric” (The New York Times)—a love story about loss, mutual rescue, and finding our real identities.