Nature Girl (review)

Summer is absolute torture for eleven-year-old Megan: she's not only been dragged from her New York City home to a Vermont cabin by her heartless parents, but she must endure all this rustic tedium without the company of her best friend, Lucy, who had to spend time with her own family instead of joining Megan. A sulking Megan gets separated from her hiking partners (her dismissive older sister, Ginia, and Ginia's boyfriend) and finds herself on the nearby Appalachian Trail; she then decides that she and her canine companion, Arp, will walk the thirty miles along the trail to Lucy's summer place, proving her friendship to Lucy and her general spirit to her family. Kelley takes the classic survival story (there's even a nod to My Side of the Mountain) into a more modest and accessible place with Megan's journey down the trail. The book manages a particularly tricky balance in its early stages, allowing Megan to remain interesting and even moderately sympathetic even as her self-centeredness drives her past civilized limits (Lucy's mother is recovering from chemotherapy for Hodgkin's, and Megan can't seem to prioritize that fact above her own desires). The story pads its corners a little for its youthful protagonist—she's almost never really in danger (unbeknownst to her, she's even secretly followed by a supervisory adult), and her supplies are a little more nourishing than they really would be—but it's honest about the physical and emotional challenges and, refreshingly, the expense of the kind of search that Megan's disappearance occasions. Kids may imagine themselves Hatchet's Brian, but this is the kind of survival they're realistically likely to be able to manage, and they'll relish seeing one of their unpromising own reach her surprising goal.