Summary

Chapter 1 – Eleven-year-old Jack Martel, in his Hubba tent at Seawall Campground on Maine’s Mount Desert Island in Acadia National Park, wakes up hot and sweaty. He discovers his mom, Becky, the rental car, and all their camping gear are gone. His phone has no reception. He imagines his mother must have moved on to a better campground, as a park ranger explains they were lucky to make it in at all the night before. Jack travels around the campground looking for his mother’s tent and rented Prius, which was borrowed back in Boston where they live. He cannot find her.

Hungry, Jack counts his money—fourteen dollars and sixty-three cents. The woman working the registration hut counter directs him down Route 102A to Seawall Camping Supplies. Jack wants to ask the woman if she has seen his mother, but instead asks if...