Backcountry

Emily, 13, is a star on her volleyball team until she suddenly isn’t. She’s always been very athletic, eaten well, and exercised, but now she feels weak and can’t focus. When she collapses, she is taken in an ambulance to the hospital. What the doctors tell her changes everything. She has diabetes and will be insulin-dependent for the rest of her life. But, she is assured she can do everything she has always done as long as she monitors her levels and takes her meds. And there is a bonus. She gets to have a dog, Molly, who has been trained to sniff out any problems. Emily, Molly, and her father go on a long-planned winter backcountry skiing trip, but things go terribly wrong.

Jenny Goebel has written a heart-pounding thriller of a survival story. There is a saying in writing that authors should put bigger and bigger obstacles in the characters’ way, and Goebel does this on steroids. The writing is crisp and smart, the characters are completely believable, and the story is very compelling. Young readers, and the older ones lucky enough to find this, won’t be able to put it down.