What if you caught the person who kidnapped a loved one? Would you turn him or her over to the authorities, or take matters into your own hands? What if that person wasn’t human? In Bent Heavens, author Daniel Kraus goes beyond the traditional “good vs. bad” storyline and explores the differences between “bad vs. worse” in the lives of teenagers Liv and Doug, whose stories will stay with me for years to come. 

Honestly, this book messed with my brain and my moral compass. 

Lee Fleming, a high school English teacher, goes missing for a few days and reappears naked in the middle of town. Over the next eight months he appears to slowly descend into lunacy by insisting that he was abducted by aliens. He eventually loses his job and damages his reputation, making life more challenging for his wife Aggie and daughter Liv. Then one day, he vanishes again and never returns. 

Before disappearing for good, Lee spent hours of his free time constructing a series of traps on his property, hoping to stop the aliens that were coming for him. After his disappearance, Liv and her life-long friend Doug reset the traps once a week as a way to honor his memory. One day, Liv is absolutely fed up with believing in her father’s crazy assumptions and following his traditions, and sets out to destroy the traps. But when she arrives in the area, she finds that one of the traps actually caught something. 

Now realizing that her father was telling the truth the entire time, Liv and Doug face one of the most challenging moral dilemmas: do they let the professionals take care of this discovery and risk losing their only clue to finding out what happened to Lee? Or should they handle the situation themselves, and attempt to extract information through any means necessary? 

As a reader, Bent Heavens forced me to examine my own moral code; if I sympathize with a particular character – no matter how horrific their decisions may be – what does that imply about me? At what point did I draw the line, and no longer justified the character’s actions? Daniel Kraus’s story made me realize that morality is truly subjective, and that I might consider doing horrible things if it meant getting my loved one back. 

Bent Heavens had some dark and disturbing moments, but Kraus’s writing style and storytelling had me eagerly turning the page to find out what happens to Liv, Doug, and Lee. Not only that, but I learned something about myself as well. I highly recommend this book – however, be warned that it is not for the squeamish. Despite this, I’ve added the rest of Kraus’s works to my to-read list. 

I had the great pleasure of interviewing Daniel Kraus about this project and his experience as an accomplished author. Listen to the interview on Episode 75 of The Nerd Cantina Show podcast.