Be Not Far from Me

One of the most influential books I read when I was a kid was Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. The journey of Brian as he desperately tried to survive in the Canadian wilderness was a story that still gives me chills to this day. I felt the desperation, the heartache and the challenge to survive on every page. Be not Far From Me by Mindy McGinnis brings back many of those feelings with a YA tone. It features a girl, Ashley, who must find her way back to civilization after drunkenly wandering off from her camp site one night. The next morning, she finds herself in a ditch with an injured foot and no idea where she is. McGinnis manages to handle this scenario with all the gravity that one would expect, and with writing that displayed the sense of fear and desperation one would expect in this situation. The stakes kept rising for Ashley so that this story kept me on the edge of my seat as I read this book long into the night.

Ashley is one of those characters one must love in these kinds of scenarios not only because of her ability to survive in the woods, but also her ability to turn a potential negative into a positive. Ashley fully acknowledges that she is stubborn, and this makes her difficult to work with, yet, we see how this can be a positive as she turns this persistent drive to escaping the woods. And she needs all the determination that she can get, as McGinnis is not afraid to send her characters into the pits of hell to see what will happen. For example, remember in the first Hunger Games book, how Katniss gets a little burn on her leg and the salve just magically floats down and saves her? Ashley's dreams that would happen. Here there are no salves to save her, and she must contend with major problems resulting from a badly infected foot with only the clothes on her back. How badly infected you ask? At one point, she wakes up to find an opossum snacking on it. Yeah, it gets that dark.

The flashbacks are where we get more dimension and insight into Ashley and her life before this incident. The friends who are with her at the party in the opening chapters change from stereo typical drunk high school students to actual characters, which is not an easy thing to do. Some readers though, may not like these as they tend to only give dimension to characters, but do not affect the overall plot in any significant way.

If I had to give one negative to this book, it is that Ashley keeps thinking about this older boy that she used to like when she was younger who taught her about surviving and hunting in the woods. She had a crush on him until he went hunting in the woods one day and was never seen again. To be clear, I am not just saying that her reminiscing happens once, or twice, but so many times that it seems to border on obsession with Ashley. Even with how he ended up in the novel, Ashley still seems to have a crush on this boy. For someone who has seemed so levelheaded and in control the entire book, this point seemed unrealistic to her character. (Those who have read the book know what I am talking about.)

Still I would classify this as more a minor gripe than a true negative of the book. I still think that this is a nice novel that may be quick to read, but, like Ashley's journey through the forest, has great lasting personal impact. I give it a five out of five.