A great adventure set in a great “new-to-me” part of the country!

Fugitives from Northwoods by Chris Bostic is a great young adult, survival in the wilderness adventure story set in the Northwoods. For those of us that don’t know, the “Northwoods” setting mentioned in the title is a broad region of northern Minnesota (also Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ontario around the Great Lakes). Historically, according to Wikipedia, this region was home to logging operations and later, lodges were built as fishing camps and lake resorts.

Author Chris Bostic has taken these historic uses and twisted them to nightmarish proportions creating a landscape with massive areas of beautiful, yet dangerous forest, appalling regions devastated by clear-cutting, forced-labor work camps filled with conscripted teenagers, and built a desperate vision of a post-societal-collapse U.S. The story’s main characters escape from one of these work camps and flee the camp pursuers through the wilderness toward the hope of freedom across the border in Ontario.

Besides being a great adventure and tale of survival in a wonderfully described locale, Fugitives from Northwoods has good, solid characters. We get a pretty good feel for each and every one of the teens and their relationship within the group.

I liked the way the author incorporated the well-known Robert Frost poem Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening into narrator’s (Penn’s) thoughts. The inclusion connected this nightmarish future world to our reality.

Author Bostic is apparently an actual outdoorsman himself, and brings that experience and knowledge into his debut novel giving a feel of realism that similar stories may lack. I particularly liked the tidbits of nature information sprinkled throughout (i.e., the presence/absence of earthworms at the lakes and assorted other fishing tips.)

Although I couldn’t find confirmation of it, Fugitives from Northwoods felt like the start of a series. I, for one, hope it is.