THE STERKARM HANDSHAKE
Susan Price (Scholastic, 1998) ISBN: 0590543016
The Sterkarm Handshake is yet another book I read in high school and always intended to buy, but never got around to it until quite recently. I remembered the novel as unusual and not popular, though at the time it felt it had been written for me — a tale specifically for a small subset of nerdy high-schoolers who liked history, historical linguistics, and time travel. But I returned to the books, for The Sterkarm Handshake is the first of a duology, knowing they were also rather flawed. I was interested to find out, as an adult reader with the benefit of historical hindsight, why these books did not succeed. To the best of my knowledge, neither book in the duology is in print any longer.