What should happen in life doesn't. What should not happen does. A trick that has run its course suddenly works Life unfolds without words or warning. Peck was eleven when his father gave him a magic kit, thinking it would help him come out of himself. Little did Dad know how much Peck's life would be consumed by magic--that he would relegate school and family to lower rungs of his sense of priorities. There was much that Peck did not yet know--how life fails to respond to glib talk and sleight-of-hand, that it can be devastatingly disappointing even when everything you hope for materializes. Contrary to the magician's talent to make objects vanish and then reappear, friends and family can disappear without a curtain call, and the unscripted parts of life can be the most profound. David Kranes, a well-known Utah writer, brings these themes to the page with the skill and maturity of several decades of writing in a believable and captivating look at the Entitlement Generation.