Fourteen-year-old Jenna is stressed, cold, hungry, and bullied to the breaking point. For several years, she has been the sole caregiver for her mother, who is addicted to pain medications and suffers from heart disease. Without any other family, they are two against the world. Fearful they will be separated by the foster care system, mother and daughter bear the hardship of a brutal winter in their car on the streets of Chicago. Jenna acts intuitively and decisively when her mother tragically dies in an alleyway. With trembling hands, she grasps the steering wheel of the old Buick and uses all her teenage wiles to flee north and to hide in the only place where where she can remember being truly happy...an old family cabin in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. She becomes a squatter on this land that has been abandoned and goes on high alert against anything or anyone who might harm her or turn her in to the authorities.
The cabin is half-destroyed when she arrives. Through dogged perseverance, she ekes out the basics of food and shelter. Jenna's new life in the woods provides plenty of suspense, as she faces the terror of a marauding bear, a dangerous chimney fire, and is discovered by a strange man. Despite the dire consequences of malnutrition and succumbing to winter should she fail, she refuses to give up. She finds comfort and strength by the beautiful pond where the soothing memories and guiding voices of her dead uncle and other family members are all but palpable. Over the course of two years, Jenna begins to discover the healing force of the natural world. Studying a tattered copy of Walden found in the rubble of the cabin, Jenna embraces the wisdom of Thoreau and continues on to find self-expression in drawing and painting. Her tentative reintroduction to society is guided by the kindness of two eccentric locals (Skip, a solitary and charming disabled Iraq veteran, and Carol, a wise, elderly woman pastor who lives life...and drives her Subaru...at a frenetic pace and includes Jenna in her rounds of visits to her isolated backwoods friends). Just as Jenna's survival seems assured, her heart and trust are broken in a cruel twist that causes her PTSD to violently flare out of control and puts her future and all her accomplishments in jeopardy. Is she going to be the victim of a devastating double-cross?
Over the course of the novel, my readers and Jenna are introduced to and inspired by both the unique and wonderful culture of the Upper Peninsula and challenged to tackle new ideas essential to personal growth and integrity. Jenna ultimately comes to embody sisu-- The Finnish art of courage.