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Overview
Seventeen-year-old Johnny Least-Weasel knows that his grandfather Albert is a stubborn old man and won’t stop checking his own traplines even though other men his age stopped doing so years ago. But Albert Least-Weasel has been running traplines in the Alaskan wilderness alone for the past sixty years. Nothing has ever gone wrong on the trail he knows so well. When Albert doesn’t come back from checking his traps, with the temperature steadily plummeting, Johnny must decide quickly whether to trust his grandfather or his own instincts. Written in alternating chapters that relate the parallel stories of Johnny and his grandfather, this novel poignantly addresses the hardships of life in the far north, suggesting that the most dangerous traps need not be made of steel.
Synopsis
A gripping wilderness adventure survival story with an intergenerational theme.
VOYA
Beauty abounds in this tiny epic, similar to the sad song that Johnny Least-Weasel's grandfather has sung to his wife throughout their many years of marriage. In this story, Smelcer, of Ahtna Athabaskan Indian descent and the only surviving speaker, reader, and writer of the Ahtna language, seems to straddle the line flawlessly between an ancient legend and contemporary fiction. When Albert Least-Weasel gets his leg caught in a trap in the dead of winter in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness, readers hear the story from both his perspective and that of his grandson left worried back home, even though his grandfather has long been the strongest man that he has ever known. Smelcer never hits a wrong note, particularly when he strikes the more somber ones. His characters act with quiet dignity, either as Johnny frets or as Albert works to survive against the wolves and the looming frost. There is grace to their motions, even when they are sitting still or as they race the clock. The suspense is played on an everyday level, which is why it works; Smelcer never goes for thriller status, electing instead to tell a tale of contemplative melancholy. How long the story lingers in readers' minds really depends on them; one gets the sense that for the author, this is a modern-day Indian story that simply had to be told.
Editorials
From the Publisher
“An unforgettable story. Brilliant!”—Ray Bradbury“In THE TRAP, John Smelcer takes his readers into a frozen world, and keeps us there with a gripping example of talented storytelling. Unforgettable.”—Tony Hillerman
“THE TRAP is a lovely story, beautifully told, the kind that makes you wade in and sink warmly into the cold, cold north of Alaska.”—Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump "First novelist John Smelcer takes readers to the Alaskan Arctic Circle for an unforgettable survival tale."—The Horn Book