Up a Tree

"A perfect...Mark Twain-style...Tom and Huck for the 21st century." - Kirkus Reviews

"True brilliance...in the finest American tradition." - Kirkus Reviews

"If I'd known it was a full moon that night, I never would have crossed Crane Swamp, pirates or not.  It all made sense when we saw that moon."

The trouble begins for young Ruby Finn Heckler and his best friend Quinn after an accident with a stolen rifle.  An attempt to remedy their mistake causes a local skirmish with one of the most influential families in America, leading to Ruby's "death" -- or so their small Adirondack town thinks. Plenty alive, and never one to miss an adventure, Ruby takes advantage of his misreported demise and within a day, he is hundreds of miles from home, befriending mothers, murderers, hobos, and revolutionaries, and within a week, both he and Quinn are prisoners on a mysterious ranch run by an enigmatic leader entangled with the same powerful family threatening Ruby and Quinn's hometown.  And that, as Kirkus Reviews says, "is when the real craziness begins."

Told through the spirited and unspoiled eyes of a child from the northern woods, this modern-day Huck Finn is broadly entertaining and humorous on its surface while tapping into a much deeper dialogue about the vast hidden realities of life in twenty-first century America.