Trouble

TROUBLE; Gary D. Schmidt; New York: Clarion, 2008; 297 pgs. Young Adult Fiction

Henry Smith's father has always told him that you should build your house far enough away from trouble that Trouble can never find you, but when Henry's older brother is hit and cruelly injured while jogging, Trouble arrives in spades. Although Chay Chouan, the young Cambodian refugee who fell asleep at the wheel, runs for help and turns himself in, racial tensions erupt when he is sentenced only to probation, community service, and the suspension of his driver's license. Henry and a friend leave their newly troubled community to hitchhike to Maine, where Henry intends to climb Mount Katahdin as he and Franklin had planned to do. And who should pick them up but Chay Chouan running from his own demons. Though some of the circumstances of this narrative may seem unlikely, and the point to be made a bit overdone, the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. These appealing young men learn through hardship and sharing that trouble always comes, as does grace. A beautiful book, by the Printz and Newbery honor winner.

LW