Bound To Stay Bound

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School Library Journal - 08/01/2012 Gr 7 Up—Radley Parker-Hughes has been volunteering in an orphanage in Haiti after the recent earthquake, but she returns home to a country in the grip of an even more chaotic situation. The American Political Party has assumed power, the president has been assassinated, and martial law prevails. Soldiers with guns at the airport, travel paper requirements-is this really the New Hampshire she left just a few months ago? And where are her parents, who are usually so prompt picking her up at the airport? Radley decides to get home any way she can, even though she will have to cross states lines, strictly forbidden by the new government. When she arrives, her parents are nowhere to be found, but the police are. She decides to leave, hiding in the woods at night, making her way to Canada, assuming that's where her parents went. One day she encounters an obviously ill young woman who is also trying to escape. The two form an uneasy alliance and, along with Celia's dog, Jerry Lee, they slip across the border. An abandoned shack becomes home, and through the kindness of strangers, they survive and become close. Once the chaos in the U.S. subsides, Radley makes her way back home, only to find that things will never be the same. A journey back to Canada can't soothe her pain, but a return to Haiti does. And so her story comes full circle. The prose is exquisite, almost poetic. The simple beauty of the narrative and lovely black-and-white photographs actually intensify the sense of confusion and disorder, giving readers a chilling feeling of reality. They see, through the use of flashbacks interspersed in the story line, how Radley grows from a confused, scared teen into a confident young woman, able to handle her own life. A masterfully written powerhouse of a book.—Diana Pierce, Leander High School, TX - Copyright 2012 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 08/01/2012 From Hesse, author of Newbery-winner Out of the Dust (1997), comes a dystopia seen from the outer fringe. In the near future, Radley, 17, is working in Haiti when the president of the U.S. is assassinated, prompting the American People’s Party to take into custody scores of dissenters. Radley returns home amid martial law to find her parents missing, and so she takes to the road and wilderness to cross over into the safe zone of Canada. Along the way, she meets Celia, an emotionally wounded teen with whom she begins to forge a powerful bond. Though the backstory is fascinating, Hesse chooses (rather bravely) to focus entirely on the quiet conversations and tentative personal progress of the girls as they raid Dumpsters and establish a home in the woods. Chapters become short, like journal entries, and to accommodate the lack of incident, 50 photographs are spread throughout the text. Unfortunately, these serene nature shots add little punch to the already placid narrative, resulting in a final product that feels well intended but never quite blossoms. - Copyright 2012 Booklist.

Bulletin for the Center... - 09/02/2012 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. CG - Copyright 2012 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

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