Notes from My Captivity

When aspiring journalist Adrienne, 17, is given the opportunity to travel to Siberia with her recently disgraced stepfather, an anthropology professor, she hopes to both debunk a myth that her stepfather holds dearly and write an article that will get her into the college of her dreams. The two-week adventure goes horribly awry, however, after Adrienne, her stepfather, and their crew find the Osinovs, a Russian family who fell off the grid 30 years earlier. When the rest of her party is killed in a boating accident on a river and Adrienne is injured, she is taken in by the mysterious, wild family. Fearing for her life, Adrienne is forced to rethink all of her beliefs. Parks (The Lifeboat Clique) creates an inventive, multilayered tale about family, faith, mysticism, and survival, offering harrowing life-or-death adventure, as well as robust characters as memorable as they are unique. While Parks’s story leans heavily on the idea of an afterlife, she does not linger on the question of religion or God, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions. Ages 13–up. (July)