A teenage American girl finds herself on a remote Canadian lake in this geology-themed YA novel.

Buffalo, New York, 1955. Red Rogers knows a lot about rocks. Both her parents are geologists, so it comes with the territory. After her mom chooses suicide, Red realizes that rocks were central to the way the woman interacted with the world. “My father liked to say I needed to understand that my mother had been born with a heart of stone,” recalls Red. “My mother, he said, couldn’t comprehend human nature, especially her own, but she understood stones, rocks and ice, and all the processes they went through.” Just as Red is settling into high school, her father decides to move both of them to a remote Canadian island in order to renovate his dead uncle’s fishing lodge—not exactly the kind of place where Red wants to spend her 16th birthday. The lodge is even more rustic and isolated than Red had imagined, but she finds some unexpected friendships with two local teens: Walter Mohaney, a skilled carpenter and amateur boatbuilder, and Isadore Whitefeather, a handy First Nations mechanic who works alongside his stoic grandfather. After Red acclimates to the tensions between the townies and the wealthy seasonal tourists—and an unexpected organized crime presence—she comes to better understand her father and her deceased mother. As Red’s summer unfolds, she examines some of the geology-centric fables that her mother bequeathed her in an old diary as well as the letter she left labeled “FOR RED. DO NOT OPEN UNTIL YOUR 16th BIRTHDAY.” If there’s one thing that every rockhound knows, it’s that human lives pass by in the blink of an eye—at least when you’re measuring them in geological time.

Bridgford’s prose is measured but full of movement, deftly capturing both Red’s angst and the liberty she feels in her new setting: “I kept the boat zipping along, and soon the freedom of being my own captain became intoxicating to me. I never wanted it to stop. For the first time I felt completely free and I wanted nothing more than to be alongside a noisy boat motor and feel the spray and wind on my face as I piloted my own craft among the islands of what now seemed such an enchanting place.” Red narrates the book from far in the future, which makes the story feel more contemplative than urgent. The author displays a tendency to let Red summarize her memories more often than dramatizing them as scenes. This, coupled with the 1950s setting, brings to mind an earlier era of YA fiction. That isn’t to say that the novel doesn’t have many of the familiar tropes of the genre, including social hierarchies, fast friendships, betrayals, queer longing, and a fairly explosive ending. Red lives a lot of life over the course of one summer, and by the time readers reach the final pages, they will feel as if they have, too.

A thoughtful, engaging tale about loss and growing up.

In this novel, a young man’s grave mistake forces him into a dangerous adventure that heals him in unexpected ways.

Noah—a recovering addict living in Buffalo, New York—has finally gotten the hang of sober living. He is gainfully employed, complying with probation requirements and exercising regularly with his faithful dog, Kimo. But just as he settles into this routine, his Uncle Bob—an imposing, ex-military caregiver figure who took over after Noah’s parents died in a car crash when he was 14 years old—requests a meeting. Bob confronts Noah for unwittingly impregnating a local Mafia family member, Lizzie Guerro. Bob insists that Noah’s only option—outside of being brutally exterminated by the Guerro family—is to “do the right thing” and marry Lizzie. Noah, devastated by the prospect of ruining his life, relapses and—while massively drunk—does something gravely impulsive that deepens his conflict with the notoriously violent Guerro family. With this, the option of marrying Lizzie becomes obliterated and Noah decides to skip town by canoe (the only way he believes he can leave surreptitiously) and keep paddling until he finds somewhere he can safely begin anew. Along the way, Noah meets 17-year-old Becca, a pregnant young woman on the run from an equally serious set of troubles. From here, the two become unlikely fugitive travel companions who encounter terrors and delights along a river odyssey that changes their lives in surprising ways. Bridgford (Where Eagles Dare Not Perch, 2018, etc.) demonstrates skillfulness when it comes to rendering suspense and twisting a scintillating plot. He also supports his creative storyline with appreciable outdoorsman knowledge, which vivifies the prose nicely throughout. That said, the canoe journey takes up the majority of the book and, after the first few chapters, begins to read as somewhat droning and repetitive. Further, some stock side characters become distracting while the dialogue—especially between male players—tends to read as tiresomely quippy. Early on, one of Noah’s pals tells him: “Make the wrong choice, my friend, and they’re gonna come at you like no shit-storm you’ve ever experienced.” Noah responds: “What if I wore my raincoat and used my big golf umbrella?”  

An inventive but bumpy redemption tale.

During the Civil War, a man and woman from Maine, seeking to avenge a murder, try to track down a Union soldier in this novel.

Zachary Webster is a sharpshooter in the Civil War and has seen plenty of combat. Back home in Maine for a winter furlough, Webster reconnects with his girlfriend, Catherine Brandford, and his younger brother, Elijah, whom he tries to dissuade from volunteering for the war effort. As it happens, Catherine has been spending time with another man, and the jealous Zachary kills him. The victim’s brother, Jedediah Stiller, is an imposing ex-whaler who is “a giant with exotic black-blue tattoos on his cheeks and chin, his long hair tied back with a strip of leather, and both ears pierced with golden earrings.” Jedediah wants revenge and plans to somehow find Webster, who has quickly returned to the front lines. For her part, Catherine desires retribution, too, and decides to become a war nurse in hopes of locating Webster. The two avengers’ separate plans get sidetracked along the way, as Catherine is taken in by a kindly couple whose promises of safety may not be quite what they deliver. Jedediah returns to sea, involuntarily, after being shanghaied and forced into bare-knuckle matches, with the sketchy promises of freedom looking unlikely. Bridgford’s (Hauling Through, 2016) novel begins with some haunting imagery that places readers squarely in the center of its Maine setting: a starving moose pursued by a hungry Webster; a recently deceased patriarch whose body rests “in its coffin in the family barn waiting for the ground to thaw enough to dig his grave.” The conflict’s effect on a small Maine community is an intriguing angle for a Civil War story, and the plot is intensified by the distance the characters have to travel (with many perils along the way) to reach Virginia. Though the war is central to everything in the book, this is mostly a revenge tale that takes a while to get going and can be somewhat long-winded. But as the plot gains speed, Catherine’s and Jedediah’s stories turn into compelling tales full of deception, wickedness, and earthy 19th-century details.

A remarkable Civil War tale about Northern characters fighting for their own freedom as they seek revenge.