A book where the author didn't take the easy way out.

Wasn't perfect, but it worked very well.

Can’t remember where I heard of this book, I know it was in a comment thread somewhere so I checked it out and I was more than pleased with it.

Mikaelsen channels a lot of Gary Paulsen here, our main character is a punk kid from Minneapolis whose parents are abusive alcoholics, and after one too many run-ins with the law, he’s gone too far. In fact, he almost kills another kid and leaves him with severe brain damage.

As part of his legal punishment, his Juvie officer—who’s a member of an Indian tribe from Alaska—recommends an unconventional form of correction as a last-ditch effort to keep the kid (his name is Cole) from becoming another failed prison product. He has to undergo isolation on an island in Alaska for several months, with the officer checking in on him regularly.

Because Cole is an idiot (really just a damaged kid, but they do the same things) he lights all his provisions on fire the first night there, planning to swim back to the mainland and just be a runaway for the rest of his life. This blows up spectacularly in his face, and in the end he gets mauled by a bear and nearly dies.

Fortunately his probation officer knows about the bear, which has an ethereal or spiritual appearance to it, and wants Cole to keep getting help from it. After getting the medical attention he needs, Cole returns to the island and—through a try/fail process of sucking up his pride—learns the lessons he needs to learn in order to return to society.

The problem is that even though he’s healing, the kid he beat the piss out of is not. Brain damage is permanent and the kid, Peter, can’t function like he used to. He’s uncoordinated and his speech is slurred. He tries to commit suicide twice and his parents don’t know what to do.

In a radical move, Cole suggests Peter come to the island and meet the spirit bear, and heal the way he did.

I won’t spoil the ending, suffice it to say that I think this book is an example of a writer doing the hard work of solving a problem that a character creates for himself, making him face the consequences of his actions in a long-term sense. Even if Cole gets better, Peter won’t, and there needs to be a reckoning there. That’s real heavy lifting for a book trying to tackle serious social issues in the teenage population.

Then there comes the sequel.

While I don’t think book 2 was as moving as book 1, it definitely kept me engaged because there’s a whole new problem for Cole and Peter, with no easy solution in sight: their healing methods worked in the woods, away from the city and other people, but they can’t stay there forever. When they return to school, they’ve healed but everyone else sucks, and they have to figure out how to not revert to the way they were before.

I like the conclusions that Mikaelsen comes to here. Without spoiling anything, the takeaway is that the cure to a broken culture is a common cause, but establishing that common cause will meet heavy resistance from those who are comfortable with the status quo, regardless of whether it works for you or not.

That probably sounds overly generic but it’s an idea that has broad applicability, and it’s worth the price of discovery to read it yourself. If you’re looking for a teen book that deals with heavy subjects like bullying, substance abuse, suicide, etc, this two-fer is one of the better ones out there. Certainly better than the teenage misery porn that is “13 Reasons Why.”