THE MIDDLE OF EVERYWHERE

Noah’s mom thinks he needs to spend some time with his father, who happens to live in the village of George River, in Quebec’s Far North. The Arctic landscape, climate and culture are different from Montreal in ways both anticipated and surprising. Learning the ways of the Inuit and discovering the horrors perpetrated on the community by Qallunaat, as outsiders are called, begins in the school where his father teaches and continues on a winter camping trip with sled dogs, ice-fishing and a storm that brings white-out conditions to increase campers’ isolation. A great deal of information about daily life and Inuit culture is packed into the recounting of a few days in the community. Beer, bullying and a hint of romance keep the first-person narrative in the typical 15-year-old realm. The conditions of life are harsh but not impossible, and the gradual rapprochement between Noah and his dad adds a nice counterpoint to Noah’s reaction to this exotic world into which he not only arrives but that he discovers he admires. (Fiction. 12-16)