Bridget Mcgowan

Rift Bridget Mcgowan

Unicorns are for girls!This sentiment echoes the feelings of Treig Chakra, a 10-year-old growing up in the slums of Los Angeles. For Treig, who spends his days looking for treasures on the lot of an old, abandsoned warehouse near his home, India, where his parents are from, is a wonderful, colorful place full of elephants and leopards; but not a place for unicorns. He holds onto his dream of one day returning to his ancestral home as a safeguard against his daily fears of being injured or killed by gang members who look for boys like him to do their bidding. When an earthquake strikes, he is whisked to a land of dreams that has the look and feel of the India he has imagined - but without the elephants and leopards. Instead, a unicorn who can communicate with him, helps him and becomes his teacher. But as suddenly, he returns to the real world, where no one believes his story. Every time an earthquake strikes, Treig is taken to his other world. But when he turns 18, he must decide where he will live out his life: the real world, where the future he has worked so hard to earn promises to open before him or the fantasy world where he can live among people like himself and be accepted without prejudice. The heartbreak comes when he discovers that either way, he will lose his beloved unicorn.