100 Sideways Miles

"I'm not sure I've ever laughed with, cried with, and rooted harder for a character than Finn Easton. His voice is so strong, so real, that his triumphs and failures felt like they were my own. I seriously loved this book."--Len Vlahos, author of The Scar Boys Finn Easton has lived his life in the shadow of a book. As a child, Finn was severely injured and his mother killed in a freak accident: a dead horse landed on them when it fell off a truck that was traveling over a bridge. After the accident, his father took many of Finn's unique characteristics (his name, heterochromatic eyes, propensity to measure time in miles traveled by the Earth in orbit, struggle with epilepsy, and a particular scar along his back) and made them into a character in a Robert Heinlein-esque novel, The Lazarus Door. The novel has attained cult status around the world and made Finn's life a nightmare. The only person who treats him as though he is not the character in the book is his best friend, Cade Hernandez, the tobacco-chewing, sex-obsessed, teacher-baiting hero to their classmates, beloved for his pitching skills and his ability to get most people--especially girls--to do whatever he wants. Late in their junior year, Julia Bishop moves in and Finn falls in love. She is creative and funny. When she announces that she is moving back home to Chicago shortly after Finn's birthday, he is heartbroken, but decides to continue with his planned road trip with Cade to Dunston University in Oklahoma, a school they plan to attend unless Cade is drafted by the major leagues or is given an athletic scholarship to another university. The trip is the first time Finn has been out of California or away from home, and Cade helps him cut the cord by throwing away his cell while on the road in Arizona. While driving in a deluge in Oklahoma, they witness an accident and risk their own lives rescuing a little boy, a dog, and a grandfather from a raging river. More than a bit wandering, this will appeal to teens who like novels that with a bit of an absurdist edge.-Suanne B. Roush, formerly at Osceola High School, Seminole, FL--School Library Journal "July 2014 *STARRED REVIEW " "If you're a young boy and a dead horse falls off a bridge, kills your mother, and leaves you with deep scars -- and you're prone to epileptic seizures -- you'd come to expect the unexpected. Still, it doesn't mean you have to like it. In the shadow of his best friend, the popular and athletic Cade, and forever tied to his fictional namesake in his father's best-selling sci-fi novel, Finn has trouble figuring out who he's supposed to be. Then he meets a new girl and for the first time writes his own story. Hilarious and heartbreaking, you'll be rooting for Finn all the way."--recommended by Lisa Yee, author, most recently of Warp Speed