NO FENCES IN ALASKA

In this YA novel for older teens, a hard-partying, drug-using teenage girl in trouble asks for help from her long-estranged grandfather, who’s facing a challenge of his own.

Harper, a spirited 16-year-old girl in Texas, doesn’t remember the last time that her parents praised her or told her they loved her. Her condemnatory father, Greg, the head of an ultraconservative religious private school, has already driven her older brother away; Harper has found personal validation in flaunting her sexuality and uses heroin with her college-age, drug-dealing boyfriend. A confrontation with her father is followed by her boyfriend’s betrayal and the discovery that she’s pregnant. Desperate to escape the mess that her life has become, Harper calls her grandfather Cooper—a novelist and songwriter in Alaska whom she hasn’t seen or talked to in 10 years—and asks for refuge. Cooper’s own life is crumbling after a diagnosis of early Alzheimer’s disease, but he’s determined to give Harper the help and unconditional love that he didn’t give his own daughter, whom he lost to drug addiction years ago. Sobey (The War Blog, 2018) vividly realizes the Alaska setting, and he frankly develops themes involving families torn apart by drug use and the sexual objectification of girls and women. He also offers a strong female protagonist who finds her voice and self-respect. The novel could be read as a just-say-no cautionary tale, as Sobey offers numerous, graphic examples of drug-related tragedy and ugly dysfunction, but its upbeat outcome feels unlikely. Harper and Cooper, however, are dynamic, complex, introspective characters who find, in each other, an accepting family at last. The warmth of their relationship leads a bit too conveniently to other familial reconciliations, new and rekindled romances, and an idealized resolution of Harper’s baby dilemma, but it has a lingering resonance.

An affecting portrayal of a troubled teen’s journey toward redemption despite a facile ending.