The Trap by John Smelcer

The Trap by John Smelcer is set in a really cool location – Northern Alaska. In this land the sun only shines for a couple of hours each day in the winter – winters that are so brutal that the inhabitants lives revolve around just surviving. In this brutal land, an Indian teenager, Johnny Least-Weasel, spends his time working a few hours a day in the general store, taking correspondence courses from the University to earn his high school diploma and taking care of his elderly grandparents. His stubborn grandfather, Albert Least-Weasel, still goes out and checks his animal traps (imaginebig, scary, steel bear traps with terrible teeth) alone in the wilderness. When Albert doesn’t come home from checking his traps in a reasonable amount of time Johnny worries and sets out to find his grandfather on his own at his grandmother’s request, despite his uncle’s encouragement to wait out the bad weather. This story is one of life or death in a land filled with wolves, unimaginably cold temperatures and isolation told in chapters narrated alternately by Johnny and his grandfather. If you are looking for a quick, action-packed story this is the book for you!