Exit Point

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Life, death, and life after death are the stuff of Langston’s
definitely different but most engaging high-interest, low-vocabulary
novel.

The “Big Plan” had called for Logan Freemont to choke to death at
age 77, while eating a grape on June 9, 2066. Instead, just 16 and
unable to face some challenges he saw ahead of him, Logan consumed
almost a dozen beers and challenged a friend to a car race, which
resulted in Logan’s being killed in a crash on October 28, 2004. In
the afterworld, Logan encounters Wade, who has been his unseen heavenly
“guide” through life. Wade tells him, “There are five exit points
in any one life. Five points when a person can die and not mess with the
Big Plan.” Though those left behind in the world of the living
consider Logan’s death to have been accidental, Wade, along with the
spirit of Logan’s grandmother (Gran), know that Logan had really
committed suicide or, as Gran puts it, “You always did take the easy
way out.”

Wade “shows” Logan how his having elected “exit point two” will
affect the lives of those who loved him. The biggest consequence falls
on Logan’s nine-year-old sister, Amy, who will continue to be sexually
abused by Uncle Herb. Unable to be seen, felt, or heard by the living,
Logan is challenged to find a way to stop this abuse before he forever
leaves the earth’s plane.

Those who find the “theology” of Exit Point somewhat shaky need to
be reminded of the book’s metaphorical aspects. Recommended.