Shades of Simon Gray

In Joyce McDonald’s young adult thriller Shades of Simon Gray, Simon crashes his Honda into a tree and falls into a coma. While he sleeps, a series of strange happenings occur in his hometown; Simon is introduced to Jessup Wildmere, the ghost of a hanged man, while his family, friends, and classmates file in and out of his hospital room, wondering if he will survive.

A plague of frogs flood the streets of the small, quaint town of Bellehaven. This plague is the first in a series of plagues that terrorize the town, which on the surface appears bucolic and perfect but is much more gritty underneath the surface.

The plague of frogs causes a serious problem for protagonist Simon Gray, a computer whiz who is driving his Honda on the night the frogs descend on Bellehaven. He doesn't see the frogs and hits them, causing a thick slick of their blood and slime to spread across the road, causing him to lose control of the car. Simon runs into the town landmark, the Liberty Tree, an ancient tree where a notorious murderer was hung one hundred years before. His car is totaled, and he is seriously injured – he is taken to a hospital, where he falls into a coma and begins to have vivid dreams.



As Simon sleeps, a number of visitors arrive in his hospital room, hoping for him to wake up. Some of them, including Simon's parents, think Simon is a perfect, A student with a passion for computers and programming. Others know better, however. As it turns out, Simon is part of an elaborate hacking scheme, which only a handful of popular kids at his local high school know about. Simon has been using his computer knowledge to hack into the high school mainframe to steal tests for some of the popular students, who, worried about getting into good colleges, want to perform well. He releases the information on the test to those students, who then use their fake test scores to apply to Ivy League schools.

Part of the mystery of this novel is uncovering whom Simon really is – a hacker and a cheat, or a quintessential American boy – or, more likely, something in between. Other characters include Simon's young sister, who smokes pot and is much more shallow than Simon, and an ambitious jock without school smarts who lingers in Simon's hospital room. As the story unfolds, readers also find themselves wondering if the popular girl who used her stolen test score to get into a prominent college will come clean about her cheating after the drama of Simon's accident, or continue on the path she always wanted. Another main character is Simon's best friend, Liz, who, disturbed by Simon's behavior before the accident, finds herself wondering who her friend is becoming.

Meanwhile, as people filter in and out of Simon's hospital room revealing bits of who he is when awake, Simon is dreaming about the murderer who was hanged in the Liberty Tree one hundred years before. The man, Jessup Wildmere, was a notorious criminal, or that is what Simon remembers from town legend. However, as Simon continues to interact with the ghost of Jessup, he begins to wonder if the man was truly as evil as he seems.



As the story progresses, more plagues descend upon Bellehaven. The police begin to investigate the hacking scheme. Pressure mounts for the conscious members of the scheme, Devin, Danny, and Kyle, who wonder if they are responsible for the crows that come to eat the dead bodies of the frogs, and the fever which comes, bringing with it signs of the apocalypse.

From Blairstown, New Jersey, Joyce McDonald writes teen and young adult novels. She is the author of two award-winning novels for teens, Swallowing Stones and Shades of Simon Gray. Swallowing Stones was an ALA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults and Shades of Simon Gray was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and a nominee for the prestigious Edgar Allen Poe Award. She has also written a work of historical fiction titled Devil on My Heels, which follows Dove Alderman in 1959 in the small town of Benevolence, Florida when the KKK come to town.