Navigating Early
by Clare
Vanderpool
Book Description:
At the end of World
War II, Jack Baker, a landlocked Kansas boy, is suddenly uprooted after his
mother's death and placed in a boy's boarding school in Maine. There, Jack
encounters Early Auden, the strangest of boys, who reads the number pi as a
story and collects clippings about the sightings of a great black bear in the
nearby mountains. Newcomer Jack feels lost yet can't help being drawn to Early,
who won't believe what everyone accepts to be the truth about the Great
Appalachian Bear, Timber Rattlesnakes, and the legendary school hero known as
The Fish, who never returned from the war. When the boys find themselves
unexpectedly alone at school, they embark on a quest on the Appalachian Trail in
search of the great black bear. But what they are searching for is sometimes
different from what they find. They will meet truly strange characters, each of
whom figures into the pi story Early weaves as they travel, while discovering
things they never realized about themselves and others in their lives.
I had a hard time reading this book. It's written so that the story has different layers which come together at the end in a surprising way. It took too long for that to happen, though, and the characters didn't really grab me right away either. I did like how Early was portrayed having autism in a time when it wasn't diagnosed...it was interesting to see how people interacted with him. Eventually, I found the ending satisfying, but I don't know if I'd recommend this book to everyone.
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