Review by Booklist Review
Atlas has not dealt well with her father's illness and death from cancer. Since then, she has made a string of poor choices, and as a result, she enters a community service program run by her father's best friend, Joe, where the participants hike various trails in the Western Sierras while cleaning them up and repairing problem areas. They choose names for themselves that provide a break from their pasts. Atlas, now Maps, is assigned to a group comprising Sugar, another girl, and three boys: Junior, Books, and King. The hiking and the work are grueling at first, but the group forms a bond, with Atlas becoming drawn to King. As the end of the trail nears, Atlas tries to cope with the idea of leaving her friends and returning to her old life. Dwyer meaningfully shows how Atlas, who brims with pain over her father's death, gradually learns how to live with her loss. The analogy of life as a trail that needs maintenance and care applies here, and Atlas learns that with both, you have to keep going.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Ever since she failed to graduate high school, was fired from her job at a friend's floral shop, and her father died from cancer, Atlas James has been feeling directionless. The only guidepost she seems to have is the Bear Creek Community Service program; while some teens are court-mandated to participate in the four-week project cleaning up Sierra mountain hiking trails, Atlas--whose father loved the mountains--volunteers, feeling as if attending is her only chance to honor him and turn her life around. When Atlas arrives, she's given the nickname Maps ("The nicknames are a blank slate"). It's a difficult learning curve: she can't pitch a tent, and the work is exhausting. But the experience is also inspiring and invigorating, and though Atlas's grief doesn't disappear, her growing friendships with her assigned trail mates--and her on-again-off-again attraction with intense trail leader King--help lighten the load. Dwyer (Some Mistakes Were Made) crafts stirring and organic character interactions via Atlas and her trail mates' good-humored banter, as well as her electric chemistry with King. Combined with the lushly depicted wilderness setting, Atlas's fledgling relationships emphasize how connection can bloom unexpectedly--and powerfully--even amid grief. Atlas and King read as white. Ages 14--up. Agent: Sarah Landis, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Jan.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
After her father dies, a teen drops out of high school, loses her job, and embarks on a four-week journey through the California backcountry. Everyone in the Bear Creek Community Service program is assigned a nickname as part of starting over with "a blank slate." No one needs to know your past or whether you're there by choice or court order. All that matters is the present: working on hiking trail maintenance. For Atlas James, or Maps, as she's now known, it's an escape from the poor decisions she's made since her father's death from cancer and a tribute to him. One of his dying wishes was to hike the Western Sierra Trail with her--the same one she'll now be spending the summer working on with Books, Junior, Sugar, and King. Maps is immediately drawn to group leader King, and as secrets are revealed, the two act as magnets, attracting and repelling one another. Maps' tangible grief is centered as she copes with the loss of the only person who understood her and always had her back. Gradually, as they clear brush, dig drainage, and battle the backcountry and their pasts, a sense of family is forged among the crew. The palpable romantic tension between King and Maps propels this beautifully written story. Junior is coded Black; other major characters read white. Gripping and authentic in the ways it portrays grief and shows how moving forward means having to let go. (Fiction. 14-18) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
