Green Mountain Academy
Green Mountain Academy
The taste of dirt was in my mouth. Around me, cold and dark. But the wind sounded far away, moaning and scrabbling at something. Or was that an animal? Where was I? I sat up. I was on the ground, that much I could tell.
My flashlight was gone, but I still had my backpack on. In fact, I’d landed on it. Lucky. The woman had been coming toward me in the snow, and then this darkness. I shrugged off my pack and dug around in the front pocket. My fingers closed around one of the pinecones dipped in wax. I pulled it out and then a packet of matches. I struck one. In the flare I saw I was in a cave. I looked up. I had fallen down a crack and into one of the Sasquatch Caves formed by the big boulders piled here.
I dropped the match just before the flame reached my fingers. My shoulder ached a bit where I assumed I’d fallen on it, but other than that it didn’t seem that the fall had harmed me. As my eyes adjusted, I could see a patch that wasn’t so dark – the opening. I stood up and stretched my arms toward it. It was about four feet above me, but I couldn’t see how to reach it.
Francie lives at Green Mountain Academy with a small number of other girls. They are all in their early teens and are attending the school for various reasons. Francie begged her aunt to go to the school. Her father has just died in the wilderness on a family camping trip, and her mother is in a psychiatric hospital and isn’t getting better. No one seems to know when or even if Francie’s mother will ever recover. Francie figures that being away from her old home, school and town will keep her away from the constant memories, pain, guilt and grief she is feeling. The boarding school is a great place to be for Francie to try to come to terms with her new and changed life.
Green Mountain Academy offers many outdoor activities, including rock climbing, camping and survival wilderness training. When Francie is climbing, nothing else matters, and she can forget, for a while, the heartbreak and guilt she carries about her family.
A freak snowstorm hits the area, and there is news that a small plane has gone down in the area. Francie is sure she heard – maybe even saw – the plane. Since she couldn’t save her father, Francie is determined to find the plane and help the survivors in any way she can. She sneaks out of the school in the middle of the night to look for the plane and almost immediately gets herself in trouble.
Green Mountain Academy’s story is told in the first person, and Francie is a gritty and determined young person. Readers can feel the character’s pain and determination as the story evolves. Although the central themes are grief, family and healing, much of the story is about rock climbing. The opening scene in the book describes Francie unsuccessfully scaling a rock wall that continues to beat her. In an exciting way that will keep readers’ attention and interest, Greenslade describe how Francie goes about climbing the rock faces and the equipment used or needed in her climbing.
A subplot runs throughout the story as well. The boarding school is being threatened with closure, and the girls and adults running the school are worried. This situation adds tension and interest to the story, and, as in any good story, readers must wait until the end of the book to see what will happen. I enjoyed reading this book and finding out a lot about rock climbing and survival skills. Green Mountain Academy was hard to put down sometimes as I wondered what would become of Francie, the other girls, and the school.
Mary Harelkin Bishop is the author of the “Tunnels of Moose Jaw Adventure” series and is currently working on revising Tunnels of Treachery for release in 2022. Currently, Mary is teaching a methods class in English Language Arts to undergrad students through the Gabriel Dumont Institute (GDI) and the Saskatoon Urban Native Education Program (SUNTEP) at the University of Saskatchewan. You can find Mary on her website – maryhbishop.ca, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, and view video clips on her YouTube channel.