GREEN MOUNTAIN ACADEMY

Courageous 13-year-olds save the lives of plane crash victims in the middle of a blizzard in this stand-alone companion to Red Fox Road (2020).

The students at Green Mountain Academy: Adventure School for Girls in rural British Columbia take wilderness survival courses. Francie, who is White, and Danny, who is Indigenous, train particularly hard because they’ve each lost a loved one in outdoors accidents—Francie, her dad, and Danny, her grandmother. But their emotional responses to crisis diverge. Francie, who feels she could have saved her father if she’d only followed her hunch, rushes solo into a blizzard to search for survivors when a small plane crashes in their area. Danny is afraid of the risk because her grandmother, an experienced woodswoman, succumbed to the elements following an accident. Francie finds two surviving passengers, an injured singer and her brother, who are cued Black; the pilot died in the crash. Exhausted, Francie desperately needs assistance—and when Danny realizes Francie is gone, she comes through. With the teachers away trying to salvage the insolvent school and the girls in the care of school cook Ms. Benito, Danny organizes the girls to aid Francie. The cast members’ heroic, selfless efforts move from exciting to stomach-clenching. Francie narrates the action while sensitively exploring the effects of tragedy, guilt, and sacrifice. She and Danny each work through their grief and find paths forward, and their courage ultimately brings benefits they never imagined.

Action-packed, with a strong emotional underpinning, this story satisfies.