Price, Charlie

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Price, Charlie

PERSONAL:

Married; children: Jessica Rose. Education: Stanford University, B.A. Hobbies and other interests: Reading, fly-fishing, basketball.

ADDRESSES:

Home—CA. Agent—Adams Literary, 7845 Colony Rd., C4 #215, Charlotte, NC 28226.

CAREER:

Writer and educator. Worked variously as a program director and clinical supervisor in psychiatric hospitals, and a teacher and academic dean in several private schools.

WRITINGS:

Dead Connection (novel), Roaring Brook Press (New Milford, CT), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Charlie Price is a writer who has thirty years' experience working in private schools and in psychiatric hospitals. Price's work has taken him around the world, to Italy, Mexico, New York, and the San Francisco Bay Area. On the Dead Connection Web site, Price is quoted as saying: "I grew to deeply admire the courage of those who lived and worked with mental illness on a daily basis. I admired the young people I came to know—their triumphs, as well as the valiant way they dealt with hardships and failures." It was partly from this that Price came to write his first novel.

Dead Connection is the story of Murray, a high school outcast who finds solace hanging around the town's cemetery talking to the spirits of dead children and adolescents. Murray gets involved in helping to solve the mystery of a missing cheerleader while a plethora of secondary characters add their voices and attempts to the plot. Christine M. Heppermann, writing in Horn Book magazine, called the cast of characters "typical" but felt that "Price ably fleshes out his characters and adds a distinctive member to the ranks" in Murray. A contributor to Publishers Weekly noted that "readers will find themselves rooting for these characters" in Price's "superb debut novel." Concluding a review in School Library Journal, Francisca Goldsmith stated that Dead Connection "will be an easy sell to mystery readers, and will have lots of appeal to those familiar with that genre only through television or movies."