Downing, Erin Soderberg. Just Keep Walking
February 6, 2024 by Scholastic Press
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus
Jo Conlan and her mother Sarah have decided to hike the Superior Hiking Trail in Minnesota. Jo was supposed to do this hike with her father in the summer before seventh grade, just as her older brother Jake did, but since her parents have recently divorced and her father has a new girlfriend, he is choosing to spend time with her and her children. Emotions are still running high, and even though her mother is not an active outdoorsy person, and claims she might cry every day, the two set off to walk 100 miles. This is a bit more than her father and Jake hiked, and the two plan to end their trip with a gondola ride down out of the mountains. Carrying a heavy pack and hiking with poles is a bit of a challenge, and Jo hadn't wanted to hike around the neighborhood looking like a dork to practice. The first day is only nine and a half miles, but everything hurts. She's twisted her ankle, and is pretty miserable. She and her mother don't talk a whole lot, and after three days, Jo is concerned that her mom will give up. They don't run into too many people on the trail, but do get reinforcements delivered to them by the mom's friends Regina. The trip looks a little less grim when they run into a former student of her mother's, Julia, and her girlfriend Maddie. The two are just in between Jo's age and her mom's, so they make a good group. Since they are now a bit more used to the pack carrying and time spent on their feet, the journey is easier, and having two other people, as well as a dog, helps. Jo even is able to have a heart-to-heart with her mother about what happened between her and her father. Unfortunately, Sarah falls near a latrine one night and hurts her ankle badly enough that she has to be helped out to the road, where fellow hikers kindly stop, interrupt their day, and get her to safety. Julia asks if Jo would like to continue with them, and her mother agrees. It's lonelier without her mother, but Jo is bound and determined to prove to her father, and to herself, that she can hike what she planned. Despite bear and moose sightings, outdoor latrines, and an almost overpowering miasma of personal body odor, will Jo be able to finish her hike and find some inner peace?
Strengths: One of my goals, which I may not manage to make, is to walk the Coast-to-Coast trail in England. What I really liked about this was that it wasn't really a tail of survival; there was plenty of support, other people around, and even though there was a bear sighting, there wasn't any real danger. Outdoor athletics (and yes, hiking is a sport!) are more often than not quite safe, if one is prepared. I loved that Downing and her son went along the same trail in order to do research for the book! The details about what to pack, what the trail is like, the aches and pains one might have, how it feels to hike in the rain, and the type of food that gets eaten and great to read. Younger readers will vibrate more to Jo's emotions about her father; my soul is dead and I wake up assuming that by the end of the day, everyone I care about could be dead, so the drama was lost on me. The best past of this was that Jo and her mother had a fairly good time on the trail; there's never any fighting or squabbling, although there are some silences and tears. This seems completely realistic, and it was a relief not to have parental drama.
Weaknesses: While I understand that Jo is struggling with her emotions about her father, her musings are a bit repetitive at the beginning of the book. I do admire her "just keep walking" attitude; it's one that many of today's middle grade readers would do well to adopt.
What I really think: Like Bryson's A Walk in the Woods (which made me decide to NEVER walk the Appalachian Trail!), this is a great book to read while sitting in a comfy chair drinking a cup of tea! I'm definitely purchasing a copy and will hand it to readers who enjoyed Hashimoto's The Trail, Behren's fantastic Alone in the Woods or Disaster Days, or Terri Lynn Johnson's dog sledding books! Now, I should take a look at my plans for Wainright's Coast-to-Coast, although I don't know that this will ever happen. It's still fun to think about!
August 22, 2023 by Dutton Books for Young Readers
Copy provided by Young Adult Books Central
Drew's mother, Heidi, leaves a lot to be desired as a mother. Her main source of income is to review products she gets for free and then sells, but she also has child support for Drew's younger brother Lachlan (under the guise of working for the orthodontist who is Lock's real father), and illegal Social Security payments for her mother, Sharon, who has been dead for several years. She splits these with her even sketchier sister, Krystal. Heidi is not overly interested in raising Drew, Lock, or middle sister Carna, and leaves most of the details of child and house care to Drew, who is a senior in high school and is counting the days until she can escape to the University of Wisconsin. When Heidi gets tickets to go to a Justin Timberlake concert in Mexico, she has no qualms about leaving the kids for a week, and Drew is used to it. The three kids spend Christmas with the girl's father, Malcolm, and his girlfriend Stephanya. When it turns out that her mother's flight was canceled, Drew is a little worried that she isn't in touch, but there are other distractions. Krystal has tried to fill a prescription for marijuana muffins in the grandmother's name, which has alerted the authorities, and an agent shows up asking to speak to the grandmother and Heidi. Drew manages to put him off. When Carna comes across Heidi's body in the garage, the girls are not quite sure what to do. Drew knows that if they alert the authorities, the kids will be split up, and since she has been dealing with most of the parental chores, and the weather is freezing, they decide not to tell anyone about Heidi's death, which seems to have been caused by a free hazelnut latte. (Heidi was allergic, but cavalier about it.) It's not easy to pretend to the world that Heidi is still alive; it involves putting off the investigative agent, texting Heidi's friends as if she were alive, and going to school while trying to run Heidi's internet review business. As time passes, Drew manages to find someone to cremate Heidi's body and not say anything; they pay him enough money from a stash of Heidi's stowed in a gun cabinet that he would be in trouble if anyone found out. Drew has a boyfriend, Darden, who is occasionally useful, and with whom she doesn't want to split, and he's another level of complexity. Things go along well for a while, but can't go on forever. When the investigative agent manages to get some real dirt on Heidi, it propels the girls into staging Heidi's death and relying on unexpected resources to continue to be together.
I've read a couple of middle grade novels about children covering up dead relatives (Pennypacker's 2012 The Summer of the Gypsy Moths, and Jones' 2021 Six Feet Below) that didn't seem believable for various reasons. This is definitely a Young Adult novel, based on the frequent use of the f-word, but the fact that Drew turns 18 during the book does help make this seem more realistic. It was also a good inclusion to portray Heidi as a loving but completely self centered mother who had relied on Drew for far too long. Even the fact that she didn't take her own hazelnut allergy seriously made me feel much better about her death, and the girls' refusal to tell anyone about it. Zimmerman cleverly thought through ALL the details.
It was heartbreaking that Lock is just eight, and that Drew is completely devoted to making sure he doesn't realize how unstable their home life was with their mother, and the lengths she goes to to insure that he always feels loved and wanted. Carna's sullenness and small acts of defiance (she gets a tattoo) also are perfectly drawn; she knows that the most likely outcome for her is to go live with Malcolm out in the woods, which would be most unpleasant.
The adults who deal with the children are all half a bubble off; their father isn't very interested in them; their aunt is involved in two many illegalities of her own, and Lock's father has never even seen his son. Darden's family tries to help, but can't possibilty understand Dew's difficult circumstances. A greatly misguided guidance counselour, who is not helpful to Drew's college application process, ends up unwittingly finding a solution to keeping the family together! I very much enjoyed the fact that these individuals were never depicted as being terrible people, just people whose own lives seemed to be working at cross purposes to Drew's!
I loved Zimmerman's My Eyes Are Up Here, but I can't quite think of other Young Adult Titles that have this exact amalgamation of circumstances. Killborn's Safe Harbor, Walters' King of Jam Sandwiches, or Paulsen's memoir Gone to the Woods have a similar blend of dire family circumstances and teenage resiliency and initiative. There was something about Just Do This One Thing For Me that was tremendously interesting, and I'm sure it will be a huge hit with high school readers.
No comments:
Post a Comment