A Star to the North: Free Range Kids (on Steroids)

I got ahold of a copy of the 1970 juvenile novel A Star to the North after reading about it on Peter Sieruta's Collecting Children's Books blog. It was cowritten by young adult writer Barbara Corcoran and outdoors writer Bradford Angier, who were friends in high school and who clearly kept in touch enough that they undertook this project when they were past middle age.

Sieruta tells the backstory of the book itself and its authors, so I won't go into that any further, but I can't resist sharing some of the things about the story and characters that made for a time-traveling read 40 years after its publication date.

The story concerns a brother and sister, Nathaniel (16) and Kimberly (14), who run away from their Southern California home for the summer and go on an adventure, trying to reach their uncle Seth's cabin in the wilds of British Columbia.

They are escaping their father, who "believed in a regular job and a mortgage and four martinis before dinner. He believed in good boarding schools for his children, preferably at some distance from home, and he believed in the Dow-Jones averages" (page 12). Uncle Seth, who was significantly younger than their father, had dropped out of college and "gone north to live the way he wanted to live" including hunting, fishing and growing his own vegetables. No mention is made of the likelihood that Seth was also probably evading the draft, since he would have lost his deferment when he left school.

Nathaniel has $500 from his grandmother, and decides he can self-fund a trip to visit Seth, unannounced, and that this is okay since he had visited the summer before. He leaves a note for his father: "Don't worry about me. I'll be in touch. Nathaniel." He then hitchhikes (!) into Hollywood and takes a train, then a bus, to the Canadian town closest to his uncle's remote cabin.

It's at this point Nathaniel realizes that Kimberly has been shadowing his travel and wants to continue on to the cabin with him. And this is when the label free range kids really starts to take on a whole new meaning because, it turns out, Uncle Seth's cabin can best be reached by canoeing the river, which is running very high from snow melt.

The duo proceed to buy a canoe and set out, facing all sorts of challenges from rapids, sprained ankles, bears and wandering malamutes. They come very close to drowning. And when they finally are drawing close to their destination, I couldn't help wondering, What will they find when they get there? Will Dad be waiting for them, worried sick because it's taken them so long to get from the last town to the cabin?

But no. This was before the age of helicopter parents, or maybe parents back then just didn't have the technology to indulge their helicopter tendencies.

Dad has called Grandma, the funder of the trip, and chewed her out for 45 minutes -- long distance, coast-to-coast, as she notes in a letter she wrote to Nathaniel in care of the post office nearest to Seth's cabin. The letter says his father has decided it's okay for Nathaniel to stay, but that Kimberly should come to visit Grandma instead of staying because "That life of yours up there does not sound to me like a good one for a girl of her age, with no woman to look after her" (page 145).

I haven't read or seen the movie Into the Wild, but it doesn't take a lot of imagination to realize this story could have had a very different ending. I think if this book were written today, Dad (or maybe Grandma) would have flown to Canada and met them the minute they got off the bus. End of story. Or they wouldn't have gotten across the Canadian border in the first place, being minors traveling alone without passports, and would have spent their time in Washington State instead. Maybe they could have started a software company, or opened a coffee shop.

A period piece for sure, but a charming and fun one. I'm glad I found out about it and could get my hands on a copy, since it's long out of print.