What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
SOLVED: Children's/YA
>
SOLVED. Two kids, cousins, get lost in the woods. [s]
date
newest »
newest »
COLD RIVER by WILLIAM JUDSON.In the late autumn of 1923, an exprienced Adirondacks guide takes his two teenage children on an extended trip through the Adirondacks. The death of their father due to a heart attack, leaves the children stranded on the banks of Cold River.
Found on worldcat.org using river in title, year range 1950-1979, juvenile.
Thank you! Solved. Huh, I could've sworn that he was a cousin and the author was a female...but google images shows the right cover, so I guess it's it.
The setting was in an older time, maybe pre-1970s? Cars and rifles exist.
There are two main characters, who live in a small town.
The protagonist is a girl who has perfect (verbal?) memory. There's a scene where her teacher aska her to explain a certain aspect of grammar, and she repeats the literal definition ad-verbatim. The teacher (a he?) is frustrated because she knows how to say it, but not what she's saying. She believes tha she had a trade-in: photographic memory for intelligece. I.e she thinks she's dumb.
Next main character is a boy who is less fiery than her. He's her cousin, or second cousin. Edit: Maybe a young uncle that's her age?
They're taken to the woods by her father for some reason. But their boat capsizes or breaks in the river somehow. The father is heavily injured. (view spoiler)[They try to take care of him, but he tells them he'll die in the next couple of days, and he does. (hide spoiler)]
They then have to survive in the wilderness and find their way home. They kill a turtle by the request of her father (violence & spoiler warning:) (view spoiler)[by hammering the butt of the gun into its shell. They trap turkies by majing a fence that the turkies will dip their head under, but won't dip back out, and the classic rabbit-foot-rope trap. (hide spoiler)]There is great detail in the cooking preparation: (gore & spoiler warning) (view spoiler)[ by cutting a rabbit right from underneath its ribs and down, flinging it so that it's guts spill out, but the meat remains; keeping the turkey blood for nutritional value, the fat being extremely healthy for them. (hide spoiler)]
At one point they find a house filled with cannes goods. (view spoiler)[it's empty, and they scavange and eventually live in it. Some guy eventually appears, and they tell him their father will hurt him if anything happens to them. He eventually find the damaged boat, tells them theie father is long gone, and attacks. (hide spoiler)]
(view spoiler)[ They finally (hide spoiler)]make(s) it back home. (view spoiler)[The boy dies a short time afterwards, of pneumonia. The girl said it was in-character of him to hide such a thing from her, as he contracted it during some falling in of cold water. (hide spoiler)]