Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

From the window of the small floatplane, fifteen-year-old Gabe Rogers is getting his first look at Canada's magnificent Northwest Territories with Raymond Providence, his roommate from boarding school. Below is the spectacular Nahanni River -- wall-to-wall whitewater racing between sheer cliffs and plunging over Virginia Falls. The pilot sets the plane down on the lake-like surface of the upper river for a closer look at the thundering falls. Suddenly the engine quits. The only sound is a dull roar downstream, as the Cessna drifts helplessly toward the falls . . .

With the brutal subarctic winter fast approaching, Gabe and Raymond soon find themselves stranded in Deadmen Valley. Trapped in a frozen world of moose, wolves, and bears, two boys from vastly different cultures come to depend on each other for their very survival.

After an airplane accident, fifteen-year-old Gabe, his Dene Indian boarding-school roommate Raymond, and the elderly Indian Johnny Raven are left stranded in the Canadian wilderness. The wise old man calls on his deeply rooted knowledge of the land to keep the tiny group alive, leaving the boys to battle nature alone when he dies.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

This winter survival tale "delivers breathless action and an inspiring sense of Canada's vast landscape," said PW. Ages 10-14. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

School Library Journal Review

Gr 5 Up‘From the compelling cover illustration to the terrifying and plausible details, this survival adventure clearly demonstrates the author's love for and familiarity with the northern wilderness. Gabe, 15, formerly of San Antonio, enrolls in a boarding school in Canada's Northwest Territories to be closer to his father, an oil field worker. Gabe's likable but depressed roommate, Raymond, is an Athapascan Indian. A map helps readers follow along as circumstances involving a plane crash leave the teens and Johnny Raven, an elder from Raymond's village, stranded with minimal supplies as winter hardens. The plotting is fast paced and action filled as the teens' cultures clash, and as they struggle against the cold, blizzards, isolation, starvation, injury, a wolverine, grizzly bear, and Johnny's death before finally reaching safety. The weakest elements of the book may be the sermonlike "testament" the boys find in Johnny's pocket after his death, and the thread of mythic raven lore that is mentioned, then given up before becoming a major element again. Quibbles aside, with echoes as old as Jean Craighead George's classic My Side of the Mountain (Dutton, 1988) and reverberations from Paulsen and Phleger, this satisfying tale will engage YAs' hearts and minds.‘Joel Shoemaker, Southeast Jr. High School, Iowa City, IA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

Gr. 7^-12. After their plane and its pilot plunge over a thundering falls, 15-year-old Gabe, his DeneIndian boarding-school roommate Raymond, and the elderly DeneJohnny Raven are left stranded in the Canadian wilderness. The expected occurs: the wise old man calls on his deeply rooted knowledge of the land to keep the tiny group alive, leaving the boys to battle nature alone when he dies. You know Gabe survives, because he's telling the story, and as with many books in this genre, the characters (especially Johnny Raven, who's a total stereotype) are subordinated to the setting and action. Whether describing the burning of Johnny's corpse on a funeral pyre or depicting a battle with a bear, Hobbs drafts the events at just the right pace and with extraordinary detail. So, although this may be standard stuff, Hobbs' strong, sure hand ensures that it's never dull. --Stephanie Zvirin

Horn Book Review

As she did with The Hanged Man, Francesca Lia Block moves outside the Weetzie Bat family to explore the pain and the joy of contemporary adolescence. Feminist in a quiet way, female characters are at the center of each short story, and, ultimately, each story celebrates the heroism with which these girls/women meet the challenges of their lives. The daughter of a lesbian couple, Tuck Budd narrates the search for her biological father, only to discover with affirming relief that one of her mothers fathered her prior to a sex change; the title story highlights the transformation of two writers of a girl 'zine describing their interview with a celebrity - and their encounter with female beauty and darkness. Block portrays an array of characters who suffer at their own hands and at those of others: the rock groupie Rave overdoses on heroin at seventeen; Desiree is excluded from her circle of friends when she begins a serious relationship with a black man. Block continues to push at the limitations of "appropriate" content in young adult books: she portrays transsexual, gay, and lesbian characters; she includes young people who drink alcohol and use/abuse drugs; and she describes sex explicitly and symbolically to convey both passion and emotional sterility. Readers will appreciate the artful simplicity of Block's style, her exuberant colors, and her fresh metaphors; and while the postmodern reaches of L.A. culture will be familiar from the Weetzie Bat books, Block adopts a distinctive voice and situation for each girl/woman. Two of the stories, "Blue" and "Winnie and Cubby," have been previously published in YA anthologies. cathryn m. mercier Sarah Dessen That Summer In her first novel, the young author writes in a fresh, unselfconscious style about two crucial summers in the life of her fifteen-year-old heroine: the present one, marked by her father's second wedding and her older sister's first; and an idyllic past summer when she was eleven and, in her memory, everything was perfect. Although Dessen is clearly interested in Haven's inner growth, she rarely allows her heroine to become oppressively self-absorbed. Haven's observant first-person voice recounts external events with a journalist's objective matter-of-factness. She recognizes her sister Ashley's dramatic excesses as pre-wedding jitters, wryly notes her father's miraculously advancing hairline to go along with his new young "trophy" wife, offers silent moral support to her mother and a sympathetic ear to a friend crying over a spent summer romance. The secondary characters are believably drawn (with the exception of a hometown model suffering from a nervous breakdown whose appearance in the story seems unnecessarily cryptic). One character whose function is all too clear is Sumner, one of Ashley's old high-school boyfriends and a symbol for Haven of that long-ago summer. As Haven's idealized little-girl view of him gradually changes, she lets go of the past and begins to take a more active part in the present. This is a wise book about growing up that won't give teenage readers the feeling that they are being preached to. n.v. Nancy Garden Good Moon Rising Before Jan Montcrief and Kerry Socrides even realize they are in love with each other, Jan's affectionate wannabe-boyfriend, Ted, jokes, "You two got some kind of secret society going or something?" But Kerry's whimsical response, "It's called the SSS - Secret Society Society," turns out to be no joke. Because when superstud Kent, who plays lead opposite Kerry in their small-town high school's production of The Crucible, suspects that the young women are lesbians, he leads the cast in a relentless barrage of harassment. Tormented and terrified, Jan and Kerry exercise their only apparent option: they publicly deny their relationship. The irony is that the harder they work to hide their relationship, the more strained and tense it becomes. By spotlighting Jan and Kerry's struggles - both within themselves and with each other - as the obvious, painful result of imposed silence, Garden illuminates the significance of Audre Lorde's proverbial, "Your silence will not protect you." She takes us inside the dynamics of homophobia so that we not only sympathize with Jan and Kerry for unwittingly spawning their own "secret society," but we realize our outrage at how this guise of protection endangers their integrity. Ultimately, unlike Annie and Liza who were unmercilessly victimized by homophobia a decade and a half ago in Annie on My Mind, Jan and Kerry challenge it with mature, determined style. And, even though Garden occasionally interrupts their passionate story with textbook information about homophobia and sexuality, she never abandons their essential romance, which, in the end, promises us that a "good moon still rises." marilyn bousquin Valerie Hobbs Get It While It's Hot. Or Not. When Megan, Kit, Mia, and Elaine proclaimed themselves "friends till the end" back in the eighth grade, none of them could have guessed what would be in store for them. Now as they enter their junior year of high school, Kit is pregnant and confined to bed in her dilapidated and dirty home. Kit's ineffectual mother, Shirley, is always out or sleeping, so Megan, Mia, and Elaine take turns caring for Kit and bringing her meals. Megan's own mother, "the General," is the height of order and warns Megan to stay clear of Kit and her troubled home, so Megan must sneak over to cover her increasing number of shifts. A self-proclaimed "black-and-white person," even sensible Megan waffles over her feelings about sex, specifically as it concerns her charming on-again, off-again boyfriend, Joe. As Megan cares for Kit and simultaneously researches an article for the school newspaper about teen sex, she explores the many complexities of the subject, from basic instinct and emotions to the serious consequences of pregnancy and disease. Megan and her friends are torn when they learn that Kit plans to give the baby up for adoption, and the tension escalates dramatically when they hear that Kit may have been exposed to AIDS. After a climactic scene in which Kit is rushed to the hospital for a premature delivery, Kit and Shirley decide to keep the baby, though it is clear, at least to Megan, that this is no easy solution. Hobbs's novel is well paced and highly readable, taking on serious issues with humor and intelligence. Megan is a bright, articulate narrator offering lots to think about as she juggles responsibilities to friends, family, school, and self. In the end she knows that things have changed forever for her and her friends, and she's smart enough to know that she'll never have all the answers, but she goes off to the junior prom with Joe, rightly seizing the opportunity to have "a plain old good time." l.a. Will Hobbs Far North Motherless, fifteen-year-old Gabe Rogers comes to Canada's Northwest Territories to a boarding school in Yellowknife to be near his father, who is working on a geological dig. Events succeed one another in an inevitable progression when a routine sightseeing flight ends in disaster near the dangerous Nahanni River, stranding Gabe, his roommate Raymond Providence (a Dene from a remote village), and the latter's ailing great-uncle, Johnny Raven, the only one of the trio with any real survival skills. What follows is a thrill-a-minute account of their struggle, against seemingly impossible odds, to satisfy the basic needs for shelter, food, security - and ultimately, for rescue. This is not just another page-turner; there are deeper issues which are addressed, including the contrast between Gabe's culture and Raymond's, and between Raymond's and his uncle's. And there is tragedy as well, for the old man does not live to see how well his pupils learn the lessons he so painfully taught them. Comparisons with Paulsen's Hatchet (Bradbury) are inevitable, but while many elements are similar - a downed plane, delayed rescue, reformation of character under trying circumstances - tone, style, and intent are quite different. Hatchet is an introspective homage to Hemingway; Far North is in the more expansive tradition of the suspense-filled adventure tale, with character changes being suggested rather than emphasized. Neither will disappoint the armchair thrill-seeker. A map and an author's note describ-ing Hobbs's research add verisimilitude. m.m.b. Liz Rosenberg Heart and Soul Seventeen-year-old Willie is a promising young music student who has left school in the middle of her senior year and returned home to Virginia in a state of depression. Rosenberg describes the scene at home during the steamy August days: Willie wandering the rooms in a foggy torpor; her ambitious father absent as usual; her mother indulging in dubious dreams by poring over brochures of Africa, the lemonade and vodka at her side offering other avenues of escape. Willie's days begin to take some shape when she is invited to a party along with a classmate from school. An eccentric and brilliant social misfit, Malachi Gelb is conducting his own search for identity. Later, on their way to the airport in a pre-dawn odyssey, Willie and Malachi have a tremendous argument that clears the air. She senses that the journey to self-discovery is a life-long task, one that she is ready to begin. A tantalizing air of unreality pervades the poetic first-person narrative. Is her father the ogre Willie makes him out to be? "You're so much alike," her mother tells her. At the party, Willie inexplicably confuses her friend's mother for a cloakroom attendant; a dead neighbor waves at her in the rain. The novel's murky atmosphere requires a persistent reader, and Willie's adolescent angst can sometimes seem as thick as the heavy Richmond air, but the adolescent characters are compelling, and Willie's resolute search for her center grabs at your heart. n.v. Gillian Rubinstein Foxspell A troubling story about a troubled adolescent is set in Australia on the edge of the outback. Twelve-year-old Tod's family is disintegrating: his father has left and they have all moved in with his tough old grandmother; his mother ignores her children to try to establish herself as a stand-up comic; one sister is running around with a gang; and Tod sees no future in his new school because of his difficulty with reading and writing. But he likes the outdoors and spends more and more time in the nearby quarries and surrounding wilderness. One day he finds a dead fox and buries it, leading to a mystical encounter with a spirit being, the fox-man Dan Russell, who can take the form of a human and can turn Tod into a fox. As his life gets more stressful and unmanageable, Tod finds release in being a fox, following only wild and natural animal instincts with no moral or intellectual problems to solve. But when he returns to his human state, he is sometimes horrified by his fox behavior: he kills and eats his grandmother's cherished chickens, and he and Dan Russell kill Tod's cat. He is pressured to become a member of the gang that his sister is involved with, but is ambivalent: he enjoys the excitement and danger, but does not like the destructive aspects of gang behavior. The harrowing climax takes place when one of his friends is accidentally killed during a gang escapade; the ending leaves the reader in doubt as to whether Tod can resolve the tension between a natural and a human life or escape permanently from his misery by becoming a fox. The two major plot lines so curiously intertwined make it hard to follow and synthesize all that's going on. However, the reader cannot help but feel sympathy for Tod, whose overwhelming problems get small help from those who should be responsible for him, and be fascinated by his convincingly described adventures as a fox. A beautifully written, engrossing, but rather unhappy tale of a boy who finds being a human almost too hard. a.a.f. H Megan Whalen Turner The Thief g A tantalizing, suspenseful, exceptionally clever novel is set in a Mediterranean-like country called Sounis in a time when the old gods have just been supplanted. (So vivid are the geography and the details of daily life that the reader can easily believe in the existence of this imaginary landscape.) Gen, a thief languishing in the royal dungeons, is summarily reclaimed by the king's magus, who wants him to steal the unstealable: a legendary stone conferring the power of the throne of Eddis, a rival neighboring country, on its bearer. The magus and his companions set off, with Gen brought along as a "useful sort of tool," to find the remarkable maze/temple (underwater except for a few nights a year) inside which the stone is hidden; Gen has three chances to steal it, achieve a measure of fame - and remain alive. That's about as much plot as can be told, because it's Gen who is telling the story, and Gen is clearly not what he seems. The author's characterization of Gen is simply superb: she lets the reader know so much about him - his sense of humor, his egotism, his loyalty, his forthrightness, his tendency to sulk - and yet manages to hide the most essential information. Which is not to say that either Gen or Turner deceives the reader: both tell part of the truth at all times. And so, unlike many other novels of surprise, which don't bear up to a second reading, Thief is even more fun to reread - you can see all the clues to Gen's identity and mission, and delight in the author's ingenuity. m.v.p. Rich Wallace Wrestling Sturbridge In a town that defines itself by the cinder block plant and high school athletics, Ben, a high school senior, is the second-best wrestler in his weight class. Rather than taking satisfaction in providing excellent work-outs for his friend, Al, he decides to challenge him for the wrestling title. Ben also struggles to find a future for himself. He does not want to work in the concrete plant and join the booster club of has-been athletes, but to do anything else will take enormous strength. Wallace's first novel is impressive for the strong portrait of a smothering small town and the hopelessness that it engenders in an adolescent. He is unflinching in his descriptions of skewed values; as they have for years, Ben and his father break into summer cottages and take small items. Ben attempts to fill this moral void with his own relationships and decisions. When he starts dating Kim, an outsider who believes that he can change things, Ben finds the strength to fight. Although he loses the final wrestling match with Al, Ben leaves the mat knowing that he has a future he can define for himself, that "life is good..I am tired and warm and alive." Wallace, like Chris Crutcher, uses the metaphors of sports to explore universal themes of emerging adulthood and self-definition. m.v.k. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus Book Review

Stranded in an uninhabited area of Canada's Northwest Territories, two teenagers and an old Indian hunter face a winter so brutal residents call it ``The Hammer.'' Gabe, 15, has come to boarding school in Yellow Knife to be nearer his oilman father. When his taciturn Athapaskan roommate, Raymond, quits school to fly back to his village, Gabe goes along. A spur-of-the- moment trip to see spectacular Virginia Falls turns into disaster when plane and pilot are swept away. Gabe and Raymond are left with a small cache of survival gear, plus a third passenger, Raymond's great-uncle, Johnny Raven, to keep them alive. Johnny teaches his two charges rudimentary survival skills, then finds them an old cabin in which to hole up before he dies. Weeks and repeated brushes with death later, the destruction of their food supply by a grizzly bear forces them into a grueling trek to Raymond's home. Although Hobbs (Beardance, 1993, etc.) doesn't write with the immediacy or meticulous attention to detail that Gary Paulsen brings to Brian's Winter (1996) or its prequel, Hatchet (1987), he summons plenty of uncontrived danger for his characters to face both foolishly and heroically. The conflict between modern and traditional ways is pervasive, as Raymond, a misfit in both worlds, struggles to find out who he is. (Fiction. 10-13)