Daryl Gregory has produced a zombie novel that is equal parts frightening, funny, and (gasp) sensitive. It's A Prayer for Owen Meany meets Dawn of the Dead, a book that only Gregory could write. The story starts on a frozen Iowa highway stretching out across snow-covered cornfields. A woman is driving with her two girls when she spots a young woman lying on the side of the road. The woman is dead, but there's a baby wrapped in her jacket. At first they think the baby is dead, too, but when they get him into their car, he begins to stir. Because of his gray complexion, the girls dub the baby "Stony." Eventually, we will learn that Stony is a zombie. From award-winning author Daryl Gregory, whom Library Journal called " a bright new voice of the twenty-first century," comes a new breed of zombie novel-a surprisingly funny, vividly frightening, and ultimately deeply moving story of self-discovery and family love. In 1968, after the first zombie outbreak, Wanda Mayhall and her three young daughters discover the body of a teenage mother during a snowstorm. Wrapped in the woman's arms is a baby, stone-cold, not breathing, and without a pulse. But then his eyes open and look up at Wanda-and he begins to move. The family hides the child-whom they name Stony-rather than turn him over to authorities that would destroy him. Against all scientific reason, the undead boy begins to grow. For years his adoptive mother and sisters manage to keep his existence a secret-until one terrifying night when Stony is forced to run and he learns that he is not the only living dead boy left in the world.