Told in a straight forward, easy-to-read manner, Saul's Nathaniel had me gripped in the first few pages. It's always a good sign when you form visceral gut reactions to characters, so much so that you want certain things to happen to them. I'm immediately invested. The pages flipped by as if time had stopped. The book had just the right mixture of creepy and scary. It would make a great movie. I discovered this book by accident in a Little Free Library, and I'm glad I did. ( )

A regular reader of Saul...….I have to say this. The ending was fluid and ambiguous and left you wondering. For the most part it is pretty decent. John Saul= Evil children. Just like Dean Koontz=On the run with golden retrievers. ( )

Janet Hall's husband Mark dies in an accident while visiting his old hometown, Prairie Bend, (where his parents live). So Janet leaves their home in New York and goes to Prairie Bend with her son Michael for the funeral. (Janet can't understand why Mark visited Prairie Bend, he didn't tell her he was going there, and he hasn't seen or spoken to his parents for years.) Janet meets Mark's parents (Anna and Amos) who tell her Mark owned a farm. (This is a surprise to Janet since Mark never told her anything about this.) Janet eventually decides to stay in Prairie Bend and live on the farm Mark owned. She is very happy when the townsfolk all pitch in and help her fix up the farmhouse. She likes the friendliness of the people and finally feels like she belongs. (Janet always wanted to live on a farm.)

Janet has an eleven-year-old son, Michael. He has made some new friends but he doesn't seem to be getting on well with his grandfather Amos, who is a very strict man. Amos tells Michael to stay away from old Ben Findley's farm (an anti-social hermit who doesn't want to be disturbed.) But Michael keeps feeling a subconscious pull to go to Findley's farm, especially his barn. Michael keeps hearing a voice calling to him from the barn... the voice says its name is Nathaniel. But according to the townsfolk Nathaniel is dead...

This book had great atmosphere and settings. The barn and farm were eerie. I liked some of the characters, Janet and Mark's sister Laura. And some I didn't. I thought old Amos was horrible and mean, especially to Michael's dog Shadow. I liked when Shadow got back at Amos later on in the book. I wished some things (that confused me) in the plot were explained a little better though... ( )

Typical Saul fiction about evil children--atmospheric but with an incoherent ending ( )

john saul's plot lines are sometimes unsettling. in short, when it was all over, you are left wondering: "huh?" Happy endings? fagaddaboutit. that's why Hollywood leaves his books alone. In this story, he doesn't kill off the protagonist (Mark?), but does something just as weird, and where did that big black dog come from. he painted it as being a familiar with nathaniel, but at the end the dog attacks Nathaniel. I think. That's what I mean about being unsettling. If someone asks what the story is about, I would be hard put to give the essence. ( )