When he arrives in Iran, learning to play the Persian card game Rook, socializing, and celebrating Nowruz with a family he had never properly met before is all overwhelming and leaves Darius wondering if he’ll ever truly belong anywhere. He’s mocked for his name and nerdy interests at Chapel Hill High School in Portland, Oregon, and doesn’t speak enough Farsi to communicate with his Iranian relatives either. Iranian on his mother’s side and white American on his father’s side, Darius never quite fits in. When Darius’ grandfather becomes terminally ill, Darius, along with his parents and younger sister, travels to Iran for the first time in his life. Never one for false modesty (on page one Blossom bills herself as 'the most famous girl in two countries'), Peck's heroine proves to be such a redoubtable 'Seeress' that despite the extravagant self-promotion, she just about manages to live up to the hype.ĭarius Kellner suffers from depression, bullying by high school jocks, and a father who seems to always be disappointed in him. And in the company of dotty Miss Dabney and old pal Alexander, Blossom sails to London where she's immortalized at Mme. ('Her spirit may roam but she calls Bluff City home'). She becomes a local celebrity: 'Blossom Culp-Pintsize Prophetess,' advertises the Chamber of Commerce. For Blossom-and readers-it's a night to remember. Plucky Blossom Culp, Bluff City social outcast, in 1914, starts out as a mystic manqué tricking gullible classmates, but then suddenly she starts having honest-to-goodness visions: first of a car accident, then strange flashforwards (even one of the moon landing), and finally a trip back twenty months in time to relive the watery demise of a British boy who sank on the Titanic.

This is still a blithe and spirited occult comedy with fewer genuine spooky moments but plenty of out-and-out belly laughs. Once again there's a child-ghost in trouble and once again an eccentric oldster steps in to take Alexander and Blossom on exotic travels.

So closely does this follow The Ghost Belonged to Me (1975) that at times Peck's sequel on Second Sight verges on déja vu.

Ghosts I Have Been by Richard Peck