Beginning with the sentence "The night the first wild child was captured, I was woken from my sleep by the sound of car doors slamming," the pace of this murder mystery and adventure novel accelerates until the final page. Kimmy and his family live in the country town of Jericho, Australia. Kimmy is prone to nightmares, but his teenaged sister Julia is a comfort to him, although her quite believable rebellious acts create on-going tension between her and their parents. Written in Kimmy's marvelous young voice, the first-person narrative immediately draws readers into the dangers affecting people in Jericho and the surrounding rural area. Well-deserving of its Australian accolades for literary excellence and enjoyable in subsequent readings, Angel's Gate advances a memorable plot with effective dialogue, characters about whom we care, questions about socialization and literacy, and expansive ideas about compassion and justice which lie just beneath its magnificent surface. (Ages 9-14)

Kimmy encounters two wild children who have grown up in the hills of Australia and tries to protect them from the unknown person who murdered their father.