Children's Literature
- Claudia Mills
A Thanksgiving weekend trip for the Outing Club to a remote Maine island for a community-service project turns disastrous when an earthquake leaves the campers trapped underground in a caved-in powder magazine from an old fort. Monniger constructs his story so that everything that can conceivably go wrong does indeed happen: the kids and their young teachers face thirst, hunger, freezing temperatures, howling winds, possibly fatal injuries, abandonment, and (for some) death. The story is narrated in a shifting kaleidoscope of impressions from a cast of characters including: hard-working, relentlessly on-task Mary; shirker Sandy who yearns only to be at the shopping mall; over-sized Bob who knows he will get stuck with all the most miserable physical labor; Sam, who keeps playing clips of disaster movies in his head.
