Opening paragraphs.................

The house, on the northeast corner of Opdyke Road and Woodward Avenue, was unlike any other.  The giant old mansion, nearly seventy years old, stood lovely and lopsided in its asymmetrical design, with its roofs and lofts of varying heights and chimneys that reached into the sky.   Here in Bloomfield Hills, a wealthy northern suburb of Detroit where top executives of the automobile industry spent their evenings and weekends in rustic comfort with their wives, children, and servants, the unusual dwelling was more home than a family needed.  It sat on a country estate that spanned some thirty acres of former farmland, with a gatehouse, gardens, barns, and a spacious garage that could hold more than two dozen cars.  It even had its own name, Stonycroft, a harsh and daunting moniker for a tranquil, out-of-the-way setting.   There were few neighbors for miles around and no distractions to disturb its residents from their serenity, aside from the occasional slicing at golf balls that could be heard from a nearby country club.  More often, the chilly residence echoed with its own emptiness while its current tenants left many of its forty rooms mostly unoccupied, unheated, and unused.  But on its highest floor, spanning the vast width of the house, was an attic.   And in the attic was a boy.

-Dave Itzkoff,   Robin