Did you ever wonder what it must be like to live a life of privilege? Imagine having a host of servants to wait on your daily needs or to be there to protect you from danger. What if you had your own private camp in the woods with helicopters to whisk you away when it was time to go back to the mansion where you normally live? Well, that is what Luke Brockett’s life is like on a daily basis. His father is the President of the United States and Luke has been living this life for the past six years.
But even with his own secret service detail, Luke cannot escape what fate has in store for him. The forces of nature conspire to turn a weekend at Camp David into a trip through Hell. When the New Madrid fault ruptures producing an earthquake that is felt all the way to the East Coast of the United States, a series of events is set into motion that will put Luke and his friends lives in peril. Luke, Theo and Callie must find a way to escape a raging wildfire and the Camp David security system or they will die.
The action in this story is non-stop, taking the reader along for a wild ride. You get the feeling of desperation the kids must be experiencing as one by one security features turn against them to make the situation even more dire. There is no hope of out-running their doom rather the teens are forced to use their wits and their combined knowledge to find a path to safety. Is the story believable? I don’t think that matters. In this case, the focus is on the teens learning to work together in their battle for survival. I found the book riveting. I would recommend this book to middle school and some older teens with a taste for fast paced adventure with lots of excitement.
Wildfire Run by Dee Garretson. Harper, NY,NY. 2010. 256pp.
The Non-Traditional Librarian 