Books with title MOUNTAIN BOY

Fiction. Women's Studies. Young Adult. Longlisted for the 2018 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic (Young Adult Fiction). Seventeen-year-old Camden splits her time between her father, a minor rock star, and her mom, a scruffy "hardware geek" who designs and implements temporary and sustainable power systems and satellite linkups for off-grid music and art festivals, tree-sits, and attends gatherings of alternative healers. Lark, Camden's father, provides her with brand-name jeans, running shoes, and makeup, while her mother's world is populated by anarchists, freaks, geeks, and hippies. Naturally, Camden prefers staying with her dad and going to the mall with his credit card and her best friend, but one summer, when Lark is recording a new album, Camden accompanies her mother, Laureen, to a healing camp on a mountain in Northern California. After their arrival, Laureen heads to San Francisco, ostensibly to go find her lover. She never comes back and unknown to her daughter is found murdered. Alone, penniless, and without much in the way of camping skills, Camden withdraws. Things begin to look up when she is befriended by Skinny, a young man in charge of the security detail at the camp who knew her mother as a child. The summer ends and Camden heads back to Toronto to find her dad, with whom she's lost touch, and it's only there she learns Laureen's disappearance is tied, unexpectedly, to the secrets Skinny tried to keep from her for months, until, finally, he couldn't."A beautifully sustained and compassionate book about the lost, written in the voice of Camden, a young girl who is, predictably rather than suddenly, abandoned in a healing 'camp' halfway up a Mountain in California. Intelligent and wary, she does not ask for sympathy or let anyone, including the reader, near--her voice is cool, sarcastic and resigned, though Ursula Pflug's mastery gives us the continuous sense of what is not said. This is not a novel of the expected. In the stagnant daily routines on the Mountain (mud and latrines and wet clothes form a large part), the isolation of each from each, the loss of family and attempts to create new bonds however fragile, there is a continuous sense of this book's being written in the shadow of real migrant camps. This is a novel that does not allow us to turn away."--Heather Spears

Seventeen-year-old Camden splits her time between her father, a minor rock star, and her mom, a scruffy “hardware geek” who designs and implements temporary and sustainable power systems and satellite linkups for off-grid music and art festivals, tree-sits, and attends gatherings of alternative healers. Lark, Camden’s father, provides her with brand-name jeans, running shoes, and makeup, while her mother’s world is populated by anarchists, freaks, geeks, and hippies. Naturally, Camden prefers staying with her dad and going to the mall with his credit card and her best friend, but one summer, when Lark is recording a new album, Camden accompanies her mother, Laureen, to a healing camp on a mountain in Northern California. After their arrival, Laureen heads to San Francisco, ostensibly to find her lover, but she never comes back. Alone, penniless, and without much in the way of camping skills, Camden withdraws. Things begin to look up when she is befriended by Skinny, a young man in charge of the security detail at the camp who knew her mother as a child. The summer ends and Camden heads back to Toronto to find her dad, and it’s only there that she learns Laureen’s disappearance is tied, unexpectedly, to the secrets Skinny tried to keep from her for months, until, finally, he couldn’t.

Excerpt: ...of grace, and hope began to rise stronger in his breast; but only for a brief space of time. Then he took notice of the fact that the lazy flakes were beginning to descend more thickly and it began to look as though the air would soon be filled with the feathered harbingers of coming winter, until he could not see ten feet away. The remembrance of that single match gave him a strange sense of comfort, small item that it might be reckoned. What did cause him to fret, though, was the possibility of the ground soon being so covered with the snow that he could no longer find his own late trail, and must give over the hope of reaching supplies under the big tree. Five minutes later and he realized that this condition really faced him, since he was now utterly unable to discern the faintest trace of his footprints; while around him stretched the vast woods, each quarter looking the same in the rapidly descending snow. He had taken his bearings after a fashion, and continued to stumble along for a little while, in the hope that he might by good luck run across the tree in which he had fastened the antlered head of the buck. Finally Felix realized the hopelessness of his hunt, and determined to make a camp, where he could hold out the best way possible against cold and hunger. Imagine his utter dismay when he discovered that in some strange manner his little ditty bag, containing that one precious match, must have been detached by some officious branch, when he was making his way along. At least, it had utterly disappeared, and he was now facing a condition rendered doubly bad on account of the increasing cold which deemed to come with the snow. CHAPTER X-TURNING THE TABLES The discovery that he had now no possible means for fighting the cold, that was sure to increase as the day wore on and night approached, gave Felix a rude shock. He faced a situation that might prove very serious indeed; and it was little wonder that he instituted an eager search of...