Messenger (The Giver #3)

Messenger is a novel by the American writer Lois Lowry, published in 2004. It is the third book in the sequence that began with The Giver and continued with Gathering Blue, and a fourth book, Son, followed in 2012.

The story is set in a village built by people who left the closed communities of the earlier books, where the inhabitants have agreed to accept anyone who arrives in need. Matty has lived there since he was a boy, works as the messenger who carries messages and news between the village and the settlements around it, and has a healing ability that he has been warned not to use for himself. The village's character begins to change as its members decide they have taken in enough strangers, and the walls, the trade and the welcome all tighten at once. Lowry writes the book for the same readers as the earlier ones, and it brings together characters from The Giver and Gathering Blue, including Kira and Jonas.

The series is taught widely in schools, and this novel sits between the two better known books while answering some of what the first two left open.