The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs

On an unseasonably warm Easter Sunday, a young girl named

Ivy discovers a chilling secret in the basement of the Rumbaugh

pharmacy across the street from the hotel where she lives with

her mother. The discovery reveals a disturbing side to the

eccentric lives of family friends Abner and Adolph Rumbaugh,

known throughout their small western Pennsylvania town

simply as the Twins. It seems that Ab and Dolph have been

compelled by a powerful mutual love for their deceased mother

to do something extraordinary, something that in its own

twisted way bridges the gap between the living and the dead.

Immediately, Ivy's discovery provokes the revelation of a

Rumbaugh family curse, a curse that, as Ivy will learn over the

coming years, holds a strange power over herself and her own

mother.

In his third book for young adults, Jack Gantos has scripted a

completely original drama. With gothic flavor and black humor,

he depicts a group of people bound together by love,

compulsion ... and a passion for taxidermy.