Publisher's Synopsis
Twelve-year-old Maxwell Lear is tired of seeing doctors, taking pills, spending nights in hospitals, and undergoing humiliating procedures. But things escalate from bad to worse when a new doctor, a terrible man with a graveyard face and twisted eye, asks him, "Have you bought your coffin yet?" Maxwell, an avid reader, desperately wants to be like his friends, but at every turn he's reminded he'll never be anything but a sick child, a thing he's beginning to believe himself. He tries to find ways to cope, but when the cruel doctor begins to visit him in the middle of the night, Maxwell realizes the end is near. That is, until a mysterious stranger gives him the chance to leave it all behind-the doctors, the pills, the surgeries, the pain-and enter a world where he discovers a book bearing his name-the very book the reader is holding. In fact-it's a book where he's the main character and the middle and the ending are still to be written. But when the book is stolen, Maxwell knows he may lose more than just his life. Who will write the rest of Maxwell's book? The answer will determine his fate once and for all.
