Leepike Ridge (review)

Tom was only looking for a bit of time to himself, away from his mother and the man who's courting her, when he embarked on his ride down the river on a slab of packing foam. Now, though, he's been sucked into a series of streams, falls, and pools under the mountain outcrop, discovered a dead body, picked up an equally distressed dog, and been plucked up at last by a fellow castaway, Reg, deep beneath the mountain. Reg has spent the last three years surviving on albino crawdads and plotting a way out, and as the man (Reg) and eleven-year-old (Tom) compare stories, they discover not only a pivotal family connection but also reason to believe that the persons who murdered Tom's father and left Reg for dead in the cave are probably on Tom's tail and persecuting his mother up above ground. This is a ripping good adventure yarn, made even better by its loose but clever patterning on the Odyssey, with the widow fending off villainous suitors and clinging to the belief that her beloved will make his way home and the voyager passing through the underworld before returning to claim his kingdom—in this case rights to the archaeological treasure buried beneath the mountain. Villains are deliciously stupid and nasty, the toggles between above- and below-ground action are deftly paced, and even the nature of the treasure—evidence that pre-Columbian Asiatic peoples arrived in North America by ship—is intriguing. Here's the perfect remedy for any summer that's been disappointingly short on thrills.