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Reviewed by:
  • Safekeeping
  • Claire Gross
Hesse, Karen . Safekeeping; written and illus. with photographs by Karen Hesse. Feiwel, 2012. [304p]. ISBN 978-1-250-01134-3 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 7-10.

When news arrives that the president has been assassinated, seventeen-year-old Radley, who's been volunteering at an orphanage in Haiti, hops a plane back to the States out of worry for her parents. Upon landing in New Hampshire, she finds that her cell and credit cards don't work and that she's forbidden to cross state lines without papers; she walks home to Vermont, dumpster-diving for food and hiding from passing vehicles, only to discover her family home empty, with no hint of where her parents may have gone. She keeps walking, heading north to Canada, on the road meeting up with Celia, a wounded young woman who reluctantly accepts Radley's companionship. After days of grueling travel and a harrowing border-jump into Canada, they make a home together out of an abandoned schoolhouse and wait to see what happens next. Hesse keeps the reader in suspense about the state of the country by means of Radley's limited perspective, doling out nuggets of information about the American People's Party, its rise to power, and the post-assassination riots; these rare glimpses make a sometimes frustratingly vague backdrop to Radley's story, but the survival elements are still compelling. The realistic treatment of the experiences of ordinary people in suddenly harsh circumstances makes for an absorbing character study, and the tale is suffused with an understated sadness and a vivid sense of place. The book is punctuated with black and white snapshots that play with light, shadow, and distance, effectively capture the forested isolation of the road and the beauty and simplicity that coexists with fear in this new life.

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