The Trouble with Heroes

Thirteen-year-old Finn Connolly damages a cemetery gravestone and is assigned an unusual punishment: complete all forty-six Adirondack High Peaks during one summer. He hikes with the dog belonging to the woman whose stone he knocked down. The demanding trip is also tied to a poetry assignment about heroes, a word often applied to Finn’s late father, who worked as a firefighter and paramedic. Told in free verse, the novel follows Finn as he faces the mountain challenge and works through grief and trauma connected with his father’s death.