THE SOMEWHERE I SEE YOU AGAIN

A high school girl in the early 1970s hitchhikes across Canada to blackmail a rich boy in this YA novel.

In Eastern Canada, the town of Burgess is on the right side of the tracks while on the wrong side is Sloan Hill—or, as the more fortunate call it, Slum Hill. As the 1970 school year begins, 17-year-old Hannah Romero newly mingles with the rich kids at Burgess’ Carver High. When she realizes that Christopher Holding lives in her fantasy house, a mansion where her father is groundskeeper, she pushes her attractive best friend, Stacy, also 17, into a romance with him so she can wangle a party invitation and see inside. After taking photographs there, Hannah realizes she has evidence that Chris is dealing drugs and—oppressed by poverty and her mother’s leukemia—decides to blackmail him. But Chris has moved to Vancouver, so Hannah pressures Stacy to join her in hitchhiking west. Along the way, Hannah falls for an American draft dodger and Stacy suffers a bear attack while camping. By December 1971, Hannah’s transformative experiences have allowed her to learn from her mistakes. In her engaging second novel, Thorne at first dwells on the bitterness of poverty and the two friends’ dismal prospects. The trip west discloses many new horizons while giving Hannah a chance to contemplate other kinds of struggles, such as the young men trying to escape the horrors of Vietnam. She embarks on a vivid, mostly believable journey, from being self-centered, manipulative, and a sometime thief (she takes a pearl necklace from Chris’ house) to becoming someone able to give and receive love. But a fortuneteller’s eerily accurate predictions provide overly convenient insights, and the ending seems too unrealistic.

A coming-of-age adventure that’s well drawn and thoughtful.