His chains can only be broken by the fire of life, the piece of wood tied to Frank's life.
LUKA AND THE FIRE OF LIFE, by Salman Rushdie (Random House, $15; ages 10 and up).
Luka And the Fire of Life, by Salman Rushdie (Random House; $25).
Shanley writes in praise of the fire of life, the open heart, the big risk, the search for some higher sense of self, beyond comfort and cash.
In antiquity and the medieval period, the heart was regarded as a furnace where the "fire of life" kept the blood boiling.
"Ever since the fire your life has been a performance for the public and the police, and then in this court," she said.
Twelve-year-old Luka, a left-handed boy who is "slow to anger and quick to laugh," is on a quest to find the fire of life and save his father, the storyteller Rashid.
It embellished a traditional quest structure with details from video games, puns, rhymes, and exuberant nonsense, telling the tale of a boy's mission to the World of Magic in search of the fire of life to rouse his unwaking father.
"The mitochondria have been compared to the fire of life," he explains.
All was as it should be, children played around the fire, and life went on.
