The book for this month is Phantom by Susan Kay. Before he was the phantom of the opera, he was Erik, a disturbingly gifted child, horribly disfigured from birth, who flees into a cruel world where he learns to survive at any cost. Torn between good and evil, driven to seek power as a substitute for the love he fears he can never know, Erik begins a dark journey that takes him across the face of Europe, from a gypsy cage to the treacherous court of Persia, and ultimately to the cellars of the Paris Opera House, where he finally learns the true meaning of love. Read the story from which the musical was created.