Blowback '07

Clashing teenage twins Arky and Iris have one thing in common: an ancient musical instrument left to them by their mother. When Iris plays the strangely curved woodwind, the trouble begins; Arky’s friend, Matt, the school’s star quarterback, disappears.

Transported to 1907 and the Carlisle Indian School, Matt is forced to play football for Coach Pop Warner as the Carlisle “Redmen” revolutionize Ivy League football. Matt’s struggle to “play his way home” is complicated when he falls in love with an Indian girl.

Meanwhile, Arky and Iris discover a cache of secrets that might bring Matt back, and lead to the ultimate rescue: their mother, trapped in the past.

Blowback ’07 launches a century-spanning trilogy to be continued in Blowback ’63 and Blowback ’94. Books two and three propel Arky and Iris to the illuminating past, and transform them in ways they never imagined. After all, as their mother once cautioned, “Every road to the future winds through the past.”

Brian Meehl has published four novels with Random House: Out of Patience, Suck It Up, Suck It Up and Die, and You Don’t Know About Me. The first was a Junior Library Guild Selection, the last won a Blue Ribbon from the Bulletin for the Center for Children’s Books, while three of them garnered starred reviews in Publishers Weekly.

In a former incarnation, Meehl was a puppeteer on “Sesame Street” and in Jim Henson films, including “The Dark Crystal.” His transition from puppets to pen included writing for television shows such as “The Magic School Bus” and “Between the Lions,” for which he won three Emmys.

Meehl lives in Connecticut and is writing his next two books: Blowback ’63 and Blowback ’94.