Burrows employs a witty narrative voice and a unique setting that informs readers about the 1830s frontier and the world of avid historical reenactors...An often clever and tightly paced YA romp." -- Kirkus Reviews
Finalist, 2021 Book Buyers Best Contest, Young Adult Category
Fifteen-year-old Manhattan teen Chloe Crandall is spending her summer in retro hell.
Her history professor parents drag her along to a living history campground in North Dakota so they can relive the Era of the Fur Trader and the Mountain Man-even though Chloe doesn't wear fur and doesn't date mountain men.
She's also disastrously inept at mastering frontier skills, and she flunks her ox-droving license test. An oversized, hatchet-wearing junior mountain man throwback wants her for his mountain mama, and rejecting him could be awkward since his sister, a girl blacksmith, is her one and only friend. All the other kids in the campground's Teen Activities Group dis and dismiss her as a gritless asphalt brat.
Chloe's an unhappy camper until she meets Zach, a hot boy in buckskins with a matching horse. It's crush at first sight for Chloe, and she's determined to prove to Zach and his friends that city girls do have grit. Chick grit.
But when a natural disaster strikes the campground, will Chloe's chick grit be enough to save a child's life-and her own?
81, 000 words