Swallowing Stones

by Joyce McDonald

It begins with a free and joyful act--but from then on, Michael finds it impossible even to remember what it felt like to be free and joyful. When he fires his new rifle into the air on his seventeenth birthday, he never imagines that the bullet will end up killing someone. But a mile away, a man is killed by that bullet as he innocently repairs his roof. And Michael keeps desperately silent while he watches his world crumble.

Meanwhile Jenna, the dead man's daughter, copes with desperation of her own.  Through her grief, she tries to understand why she no longer feels comfortable with her boyfriend and why a near stranger named Michael keeps appearing in her dreams.

Suspenseful and powerfully moving, this is the unforgettable story of an accidental crime and its haunting web of repercussions.

Genres: Young Adult, Fiction, Realistic Fiction, Contemporary, School, Teen, High School

245 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

There is more than one author with this name

Born in San Francisco, CA, and raised in Chatham, NJ, Joyce McDonald received her BA and MA from the University of Iowa, and went on to complete her Ph.D. at Drew University. She is the author of several books for children and young adults, among them the award winning Swallowing Stones, and the Edgar Award Nominated Shades of Simon Gray. She has taught at East Stroudsburg University in PA, Drew University in NJ, and is currently on the faculty of Spaulding University's Brief-residency MFA in Writing Program in Louisville, KY. For over ten years, Joyce has served on the Rutgers Unversity Council on Children's Literature. She and her husband live in Forks Township, PA.

Reviews

[Stacy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I HATE the ending of this book!!! I seriously want back the hours that I wasted reading this book!!! The story had such great suspense, building up to what could have been such a supreme moment of plot, but then it falls flat - no, worse than that, it ceases to exist as a narrative. It's as if the author couldn't write the ending that was destined to exist!! When I am forced to teach this book, which I avoid doing if I can, I have the class stop reading right before the last few pages to have my students "Beat the Author." They work in pairs or triads to write the ending that they think should occur. Then I mix all of the possible endings together, including the actual ending from the novel (which I type out so it looks like all of the others), and we do a read around and try to guess which is the actual ending. My students' versions are ALWAYS better!!! The original ending ruins everything that came before it! What a waste!!!

[Karol · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so mysterious and captivating, I could not put it down. Michael received a gun on his seventeenth birthday, and fires it into the woods. That bullet hits a man that was working on his roof and kills him. After firing the rifle Michael hears on the radio that the police is looking for the gun that matches the bullet.The police start rummaging Michael's neighbors, looking for the rifle. As all of this goes on, Michael becomes paranoid and tries to convince himself that that bullet did not come out from his rifle. To make things worse, the man's daughter, Jenna attends the same school as Michael. Jenna starts having recurring dreams with Michael in them. They eventually form a friendship, and Michael starts going crazy from the guilt he feels, and turns himself into the police. I usually am not attracted to mystery books, but the way that the author wrote this book was amazing, and it was very hard for me to stop reading it. She definitely established the "sink in your teeth" effect in this book, and I would reccomend it to anyone.

[Valerie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The ENTIRE novel you're waiting for the moment when the two characters finally interact face to face...and the book ends right as it's about to happen. Seriously?

[౨ৎ careena ౨ৎ (life of a showgirl!! ❤️‍🔥) · Rating 3 out of 5]

summer reading for school 😝

[Maggie DeCeuninck · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the overall plot, but it really felt like there wasn’t a plan to wrap it up, and it just ended to end. I would’ve liked to see it all resolve a little better.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

The internal conflict that Michael Mackenzie endures throughout the novel Swallowing Stones and the lies he must come up with to cover up his crime are some of the best features of this novel. The novel starts off with Michael Mackenzie carelessly firing off a new riffle he received as a birthday present; what Michael does not know is that his bullet traveled far enough in the air and ended up hitting a man that was fixing his roof. The next day, Michael learns of the man that was killed by a stray bullet and right away, he and his friend Joe know that it had to have been Michael’s bullet that killed the man. The two friends come up with a plan to cover up Michael’s crime and quickly put the plan into motion. However, as Michael begins to understand the severity of his crime, he begins to feel guilty and hates the fact that he is lying to everyone, including the cops. In addition, Michael feels bad to the man’s family, especially for Jenna (the man’s daughter) that also attends his school. Since the novel drifts back and forth between what Michael is going through and what Jenna is going through, the reader gets a thorough understanding of how both characters are feeling and what they go through as they try to cope with this tragedy. I would highly recommend this novel to teachers because I believe that the novel can help students understand that actions have consequences and the themes in the novel are applicable to many scenarios and settings.

[Charley Harpole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michael MacKenzie and a friend decide to shoot of a rifle on the Fourth of July at a family party; he had no idea of the consequences that would follow as a result of their actions. The bullet that they fired traveled through the air hit a man named Charlie Ward several blocks away in the head as he was fixing his roof. Michael finally realizes that he fired the shot that killed a man and he becomes a suspect in the case. So he decides to bury the rifle in his back yard under a pile of wood. When the police come looking for the rifle, he claims that it was stolen from a friend’s car but this implicates his friend as an accessory. It is not long before Michael’s whole world starts to fall apart. Charley Ward had a daughter who, throughout the whole book is searching for her father’s killer. She soon hears, from gossip that the shot came from the Mackenzie house during a party.

I thought this book was okay. It took me a while to get into reading it but once I did, I got sucked into the pages. This is a book about two lives that are separate but deeply intertwined. This book teaches a valuable lesson that even a harmless action can have unmistakable consequences that can affect you for the rest of your life.

[Jena Guthrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Swallowing stones is a story about a seventeen year old boy named Michael who on his birthday recieves a rifle. He shoots one shot in the air, which changes his life; for the worse. A mile away, he has taken the life of a innocent man. As time progresses, Michael finds out he is the murderer. Jenna, the daughter of the man killed, has been completely devistated. Her relationship between her boyfriend and friends begin to change as she starts having dreams about Micheal, the boy in which she never met. This accidental crime turned for the worst as the guilt haunts the mother, Jenna and Michael. As the story unfolds, Jenna and her mother become filled with guilt, examining all the precautions they could have taken so that the father wasn't outside at the time the gun was drawn. They begin to seperate themselves from their friends due to this guilt. Michael on the other hand, has a specific reason as to why he should be guilty. As the story is unfolding, Michael watches Jenna's everyday moves and begins to feel even worse about the accidental crime. I would reccomend this book to anyone that loves a suspicious and powerful story that brings guilt from crime, to life.

[Tommy Benson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Swallowing Stones written by Joyce McDonald, is about two characters.Michael who was the one who shot the rifle and killed Jenna’s dad, Jenna is the second main character. Throughout the book they both go through struggles, Michael’s struggle is trying to cover up the killing and Jenna’s is trying to find the murderer, now for the review. This book is god awful it was one of the most boring books I've ever read and I've read the bible, now McDonald does a great job with detail in the book but his characters are just boring and most of the time plain stupid. Right from the start of the book you can see what’s gonna happen in the end and there's no suspense whatsoever throughout the book. All the characters including the side ones have boring stories and are so generic and the ending oh god the ending was terrible, the book built up all this “Suspense” to just end it in a really boring forest scene. This message goes out to anybody who is going to read the book or wants to DON”T just pick up hunger games or something fun, you need to avoid this book as much as possible.

[Taylor Gwinn-bowles · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so mysterious and captivating, I could not put it down. Michael received a gun on his seventeenth birthday, and fires it into the woods. That bullet hits a man that was working on his roof and kills him. After firing the rifle Michael hears on the radio that the police is looking for the gun that matches the bullet.The police start rummaging Michael's neighbors, looking for the rifle. As all of this goes on, Michael becomes paranoid and tries to convince himself that that bullet did not come out from his rifle. well then Michael every night he sat on the church steps across from Jenna house with his head down.

[Sarah M · Rating 1 out of 5]

We read this in high school as part of the curriculum. I would describe the story telling as flat and the characters are poorly developed. There is a lot of false anxiety forced into the book and not much development in true emotion.

[FANCEYY GURRAL ZARI AYE · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was so mysterious and captivating, I could not put it down. Michael received a gun on his seventeenth birthday, and fires it into the woods. That bullet hits a man that was working on his roof and kills him. After firing the rifle Michael hears on the radio that the police is looking for the gun that matches the bullet.The police start rummaging Michael's neighbors, looking for the rifle. As all of this goes on, Michael becomes paranoid and tries to convince himself that that bullet did not come out from his rifle. To make things worse, the man's daughter, Jenna attends the same school as Michael. Jenna starts having recurring dreams with Michael in them. They eventually form a friendship, and Michael starts going crazy from the guilt he feels, and turns himself into the police. I usually am not attracted to mystery books, but the way that the author wrote this book was amazing, and it was very hard for me to stop reading it. She definitely established the effect in this book, and I would reccomend it to anyone.

[Deb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Swallowing Stones is a terrific young adult novel, posing some tough ethical questions. Jenna Ward's father is killed in a freak accident after a teenager shoots an antique Winchester into the air. The story is told from two different points of view: Jenna's and Michael, who fired the gun. As Jenna deals with her father's sudden death, Michael is wracked not only with his guilt, but with the pact he made with Joe, his best friend, to keep the circumstances of the accident secret. The portrayal of the two teens, their interactions with their friends, and their struggle with doing what is right, is quite realistic. The story was gripping, and I couldn't put it down! There is some mild sexual content (the description of very realistic emotions and physical reactions) that might prevent me from using this book with my 7th graders, but it's certainly a book that would capture their interest, and I think that the questions the book poses are probably worth a few "embarrassing" lines.

[Shalee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starting with a murder on the first page and revealing the killer on the second may not be conventional, but Joyce McDonald made in work in Swallowing Stones. It tells a story from two drastically different perspectives, each their own protagonist and partially the antagonist of the other. Jenna, who watched her father die, wants justice. Michael, who shot his new gun into the air a single time and accidentally killed a man, want the whole thing to blow over without getting caught. Throughout the book the ideas of everyone having their own story is emphasized. Anyone can relate to this book’s focus on making hard decisions, though generally not as drastic as the ones the characters must make. I picked this book primarily for its uniqueness, telling a story from conflicting viewpoints is something I’ve never seen before. Though not as exciting as what I had hoped, it definitely met my expectations, and, in some ways, exceeded them. Overall, Swallowing Stones is a good, very unique book that I would recommend to anyone looking for something outside of the usual.

[Mashfee Alam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joyce Mcdonald did a great job with creating an immense amount suspense in this book. It starts off with teenager Micheal shooting a rifle on his rooftop as a new years celebrations. The most unexpeccted thing hppened after this. He ended up killing a man from a mile away. As soon a he heard the news, hes been trying ever since to cover up all his tracks so no one would find out it was him. However, he stills feels alot of guilt, as shown when a kid in his school said it was his friend who shot the gun, he punched him. His personal life ws also being extremely affeced by this. The book does a great job on showing his true feelings and how he truly regrets the act. It shows how every single day he thinks about it and even when hes about to do the smallest thing, he thinks about how it would affect them finding out that he was the one who shot the gun. I would reccomend this book to people who like suspence and self to self conflicts. Overall, it was a great book.

[Erin Reilly-Sanders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, but I was reading rather quickly and didn't really get drawn too far into it. The "dream" scenes with the "Ghost Tree" were vaguely annoying because it sort of steps beyond the realm of realism but are probably necessary to deal with these types of deep feelings, similar to how fantasy can deal with issues of good and evil that would be cheesy in contemporary realistic fiction. The characters felt real and I thought that the realistic part of the ending was nicely and sensitively done.

[Lily Gatto · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Swallowing Stones" by Joyce McDonald is a mysterious realistic-fiction novel with just the right amount of suspense that makes you want to keep reading until the very end. In this book, the characters are learning all about life lessons and facing reality. This novel shows you how it can sometimes be hard to make the right decisions when you know they can come with difficult consequences. I recommend this book to any teenager who is looking for an easy mystery read.

[Jacqueline V · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well written book, i enjoyed how it had different chapters for the different characters point of view on the whole situation that happened with Michael McKenzie and Jenna Wards father!! I would totally read it again:)

[Joselyn Vargas · Rating 5 out of 5]

*Spoiler Alert*

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extremely intriguing concept, not the greatest execution.

Swallowing Stones excellently captures the themes of guilt, responsibility and the unintended consequences of one’s actions. The concept of firing off a rifle into the air and accidentally killing someone, which is a very realistic situation, is a very intriguing topic for a fictional story. But although the main plots concept is intriguing and interesting, the overall story fell flat in many areas.

Most of the book was painfully slow and the characters felt one dimensional, lacking any form of genuine personality. I did in fact, enjoy the McDonald’s exploration of moral dilemmas. I found myself constantly reflecting on the complexities of what is truly right and wrong as perspectives changed throughout the book.

Overall, I do think that Swallowing Stones is a compelling read with a good premise, but it falls short in delivering a fully immersive experience. I’d say it’s a good choice for readers who enjoy slower paced, realistic books about difficult moral dilemmas, but it may not leave a lasting impression on most readers.

[J · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was in our English closet, and I was looking for a third book to read in American Lit.

I have no idea why any school would have multiple copies of this book. The characters were all cliche, and the prose of their descriptions was horrible. Every character completely brushes past both the grief of the main girl and the lying and horrid act of the main boy. The themes are consistently present but are dwelt upon better in just about every other book that tries to explore it. The plot doesn't go anywhere, but it is mildly entertaining watching an author so poorly replicate teenage emotions and action.

[Kaylee Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not usually a big reader, but this book was amazing! The suspenseful and intriguing plot along with the use of two different main characters kept me interested and waiting to read more, which is often something I struggle with when finding books. The use of Michael's conflicting feelings of guilt and remorse surrounding the death of Charlie Ward and Jenna's feelings of sadness and loss of her father make for a very interesting storyline. The use of Thomas C. Foster’s Guide on How To Read Literature Like A Professor helped me make so many deeper connections and highlighted how the use of simple things like violence, weather, and sex can mean so much more than what meets the eye in literature. For example, in this book, one of the main characters, Joe has an outburst of drunken rage and takes out his anger on a reckless driver’s windshield in the middle of the road. Now to the naked eye, this just looks like violence, but with the help of Foster, I realized that this drunken rage really symbolized the inner demons that Joe was battling with and had nothing to do with the girl in the car. This was an outstanding book and I would recommend it to any young adults who have an interest in novels that involve mystery with a touch of romance.

[Natalie Beal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly, it was a decent book. It wasn't terrible but it wasn't great either. It didn't spike my interest until the end of the book, but it was still pretty good. But I don't particularly appreciate how I read that whole book and didn't get to know if Michael goes to jail or not, how it ended though I don't really think he will because I think he will explain it all to Jenna and she will get to see his side of it.

[Andrea Amezcua · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was no real resolution to the book and it was just really slow too. It had a good plot line but there was just such more that could have been done with it.

[Jaiden · Rating 3 out of 5]

It had a bad ending

[Kacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was not expecting to like this book as much as I did. Fantastic YA for teens highlighting the ethics surrounding the gray areas in life.

[Maddie Campbell · Rating 2 out of 5]

wth was that.. miss handles better pick a better book next time

[Madison · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Swallowing stones"by Joyce McDonald is a very mysterious book. From the very beginning the book had me on the edge of my seat. Michael seemed like he was in deep trouble, and I had no idea how I was getting out of it. I also felt bad for Jenna, and didn't know how she would get through this hard time. The format of the book is set up well, and the book provides many details. The beginning was very good, but as it goes on the book becomes rather boring and nothing was really suspenseful anymore. The ending of the book was my least favorite part. I thought there would be a twist in the story, but the plot didn't change and it disappointed me. All in all the book was good and I enjoyed reading it.

[Mark Cervoni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mrs. Bell made me read this in 8th grade. Revisited this one recently because I randomly remembered it and couldn’t remember the ending. Good coming of age story.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

3.5 stars. discovered this book when looking at what my high school now requires books as summer reading. a sad, dark story but a significant story for YA and adolescents to read.