Trail of Crumbs | CM: Canadian Review of Materials

Volume XXV / Issue 21 - February 8 / 2019

Trail of Crumbs

Author:

Lisa J. Lawrence

Victoria, BC: Orca, March, 2019

247 pp., trade pbk. (with flaps), pdf & epub, $14.95 (pbk.)

ISBN:

9781459821217 (pbk.)

9781459821224 (pdf)

9781459821231 (epub)

Grades:

Grades 8 and up

Ages:

Ages 13 and up

Review by:

Lacey Crowie (Reviewed from Advance Reading Copy)

Excerpt:

Greta led the way back to Roger and Patty’s door. She examined it, but the varnished wood gave no clues. Ash stepped beside her and knocked. They waited five seconds. Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. He knocked again. Still nothing. He swung the door open. No one. The bed was unmade, with two dents in the pillows and the blanket twisted in a knot at the foot.

They stepped inside. All normal, except that Patty and Roger weren’t usually gone by 6:00 AM. Especially Patty. Something else seemed off too. Greta ran her finger over the vanity where the plate and candle had stood. Despite the unmade bed it looked too tidy. No – bare. It looked bare. She pulled open the dresser drawers. Not quite empty, but nearly. Some panty hose and summer shorts left behind.

“Ash, the closet.” He swung open the door and pawed through the hangers. The same. Roger’s suit still hung, and a dress Patty wore once to a wedding.

The results. She couldn’t look at Ash.

In eight years, Dictator Patty had never, ever lost a battle.

Greta and Ash have grown up with a vague memory of their mother who passed away from breast cancer when they were young. Their father, Roger, remarried Patty– the stepmom who doesn’t care about the two of them at all. When Patty makes Roger choose between being there for his twin teenagers and being there for her, the twins are left alone with no money and a rental payment deadline looming ahead of them. Meanwhile, Greta is working through personal issues with a group of students she used to be friends with – one of them a boy who took advantage of her at a party. As Greta and Ash navigate the situation they find themselves in, all hope seems lost; however, through their unconditional bond and support of each other, they work through things together to find the silver linings they do still have in their life.

Lawrence’s novel is a punch to the gut right from the beginning. The content is mature and covers child abandonment, sexual consent, broken families and overall despair. Trail of Crumbs moves the reader to feel as forlorn as the main characters Greta and Ash do.

While it is difficult to believe a father, who is relatively static for most of the novel, would choose to leave his teenagers to fend for themselves and follow the particularly nasty character of Patty, the reader can accept this as it allows for plenty of self-discovery and reflection from both Greta and Ash.

Overall, Trail of Crumbs is an easy read, with well-developed writing and plotting. I would recommend it to young adult and adolescent readers, with the caution that, while the story is not picturesque, it is raw and emotional, allowing the door to be opened for many different sensitive conversations.

Highly Recommended

Reviewer:

Lacey Crowie is a Degree Advisor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and has her Masters of Children’s Literature from the University of British Columbia.