Home-schooled 16-year-old Jesus freak Billy Allbright leaves his overprotective mom to embark on a geocaching treasure hunt through the western United States. His aim? To uncover the truth about his dead Mark Twain–scholar father and to locate a valuable manuscript Twain supposedly penned as the sequel to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. References to the classic run (amok) from the obvious—a lovable, gay, African-American major-league baseball player sidekick named Ruah—to more subtle ones that connect religion, gender and love. Despite some roadblocks, Meehl spins a complex, thought-provoking plot in which the duo’s spiritual journeys mirror their physical hunt. The meat lies in their heady conversations on the road. These platitude-filled interludes on religion and sexuality go on for pages, however, and may cause readers to skip to get to the action. Characterizations occasionally feel uneven, especially when Billy makes references to things like SparkNotes and technology that neither his mother nor his background would allow. Meehl also occasionally stumbles over language: Billy’s dad leaves clues in the form of hokey, clunky, rhyming couplets that link Twain’s work to the hunt. Still, the work’s ambition is admirable, and readers who have grown tired of the supernatural and the dystopic will be thrilled to sink their teeth and their brains into reality. (Fiction. 14 & up)
