Stronghold

Joe Aberdeen, 13, has to move to Arizona from Indiana to live with his father when his mother dies. The sudden changes he faces create a feeling of helplessness mixed with anger. He withdraws into an inner sanctum, but it is not free from nightmares and anxieties. Supported by a loving family and a new friendship with a Native American boy, Joe moves cautiously out of his private and miserable mental world into the physical world of people, places and events, some comfortingly ordinary and some quite out of the ordinary. Joe builds a tree fort where he feels safe and strong, but it is the wisdom and love from beyond the grave that reveal to Joe the source of his real strength.