Searching for Sky by Jillian Cantor (review)

The only place Sky has only ever known is Island, the harsh but beautiful island where she lived with her mother, their spiritual leader Helmut, and River, Helmut’s son. Her mother and Helmut have died, but Sky and River are teens now and able to care for themselves, still following the routines, believing that what is around them is all that there is. When a boat comes to “rescue” them, Sky resists mightily, entirely unaware that there is a whole world beyond Island, a culture that knows about Helmut’s former cult and the fact that he used his son, River, to help kill them the other cult memebers before going into hiding. Suddenly, Sky is asked to go by her infant name, Megan, and to adjust to contemporary Californian society. There is, of course, no going back to a time when you didn’t know that the man who raised you was the person who killed your father (among others), and that life is infinitely bigger than one stretch of a tiny Pacific island. Sky’s absolute bewilderment and the concurrent misery are palpable at times, and it makes the small victories she achieves all the more relieving. The glimpses of how horrifying the world would appear to someone who doesn’t know about school shootings or cults are mostly well employed to further sympathy for Sky, and readers will likely be firmly on her side from the first moment of terror when she spots the incoming boat. Survival fans may wish initially that Sky had stayed on the wild island, but they will likely readily admit that this twist on the usual survival scenario demands just as much grit, savvy, and determination from her.