The Maze

by Will Hobbs

Overview

Just fourteen, Rick Walder is alone, on the run, and desperate. Stowing away in the back of a truck, he suddenly finds himself at a dead end, out in the middle of nowhere. The Maze. In this surreal landscape of stark redrock spires and deep sandstone canyons, Rick stumbles into the remote camp of Lon Perigrino, a bird biologist who is realeasing fledgling California condors back into the wild. Intriqued by the endangered condors and the strange bearded man dedicated to saving them, Rick decides to stay on. When two men with a vicious dog drive up in a battered old Humvee, Rick discovers that Lon and his birds are in grave danger. Will he be able to save them? In a heart-stopping adventure infused with the spirit of the Icarus myth and a boy's dreams of flight, Will Hobbs brings readers a unique tale of identity, personal growth, and friendship.

01 Blue Spruce Award Masterlist (YA Cat.), 01 AZ Young Reader Award Masterlist (Teen Bks cat.), 00-01 Sunshine State Young Reader's Award Masterlist (Gr. 6-8), 00-01 Black-Eyed Susan Award Masterlist, 00-01 Minnesota's Maud Hart Lovelace Book Award Masterlist, 00-01 South Carolina Book Award Nomination Masterlist (Grds 6-9), 00-01 Lone Star Reading List, 00-01 Utah Book Award (Gr. 7-12), 01 Washington State Evergreen YA Book Award Masterlist, 00-01 Young Hoosier Book Award Masterlist (Gr. 6-8), and 01 Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award Nominee Masterlist

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780380729135
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	08/01/1999
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	445,389
Product dimensions:	5.12(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.51(d)
Lexile:	720L (what's this?)
Age Range:	10 - 14 Years

About the Author

Will Hobbs is the award-winning author of nineteen novels, including Far North, Crossing the Wire, and Take Me to the River.

Never Say Die began with the author's eleven-day raft trip in 2003 down the Firth River on the north slope of Canada's Yukon Territory. Ever since, Will has been closely following what scientists and Native hunters are reporting about climate change in the Arctic. When the first grolar bear turned up in the Canadian Arctic, he began to imagine one in a story set on the Firth River.

A graduate of Stanford University, Will lives with his wife, Jean, in Durango, Colorado.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Rick Walker tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry.

"The state of Nevada has a problem with you... " the judge began, then paused to glare at him over his reading glasses.

Rick Walker glanced at his social worker, seated beside him on his right. He wondered if the pause meant he was supposed to answer. He wasn't sure what to make of this bald and bony-headed old man who was the judge. The sign on the door of his courtroom said he was The Honorable Samuel L. Bendix. At the moment he seemed more hostile than honorable.

"Why?" the judge suddenly demanded.

Rick was confused. Why what? What was the judge asking him? Once again his eyes went to his social worker for help. Janice Baker seemed confused too.

As Rick looked back toward the black robe, he felt his lip quiver. In an instant he forgot that his social worker had warned him about the judge's "enormous discretionary power." He reverted to his instincts for dealing with powerful adversaries: don't show fear, or you'll be eaten alive.

With a slight shrug he asked, "Why what?"

He saw the judge's skin flush red up and over his skull. "Why were you throwing the stones, repeatedly, at the stop sign? Why would anyone throw more than thirty rocks at a stop sign?"

Rick knew he couldn't afford to say anything further that would get taken the wrong way. He hesitated, looking deep inside for the real answer. That's what the judge wanted: the real answer.

His hesitation lengthened. Rick didn't know the real answer. The only thing he could think of was his grandmother dying. Everything that went wrong happened because of that. But the judge wasn'tgoing to accept excuses, especially something that happened four years ago. Why was he throwing those rocks?

He didn't know the answer himself. It was all too confusing. All he could remember was being in a sort of trance. It had happened only a few blocks from the group home, on his way from school. He didn't know he had thrown so many rocks. He couldn't even remember what he'd been thinking about. "I don't know," he said at last.

"You don't knowthe judge repeated incredulously.

Rick tried his best. "It wasn't for any specific reason," he explained.

"Not for any reason.

The rising cadence of the judge's voice felt ominous. Rick unfolded his arms and put them down by his sides. "Just general frustration, I guess," he managed.

The judge looked aside, put his fist to his chin, looked back at Rick. "General frustration is what I'm feeling right now myself," the judge said. "Just this morning, over coffee, I read about two juveniles no older than you bludgeoning a nine-year-old to death with a baseball bat. "

So? Rick thought. What does that have to do with me?

The judge paused. His eyes had drifted, unfocusing, to the floor. "So many with no conscience," he said as if to himself. "A petty offender one day becomes a murderer the next. It didn't used to be like this."

The judge's eyes were suddenly back in focus and locked on Rick. "Didn't I tell you just six weeks ago that I didn't want to see you in my courtroom ever again?"

"Yes," Rick agreed.

"Yes, Your Honor," his social worker said under her breath.

"Yes, Your Honor."

Rick felt so light-headed he thought he might faint. In the corner of his vision he was aware of a man in a police uniform coming up the side aisle. It was young Mike Brown, his probation officer, with his trim dark mustache and his face blank like a robot's.

"Say you're sorry," Janice Baker whispered.

Rick glanced at her. He should have said it himself, before this. Now the judge was glaring worse than ever, knowing he'd just been instructed to say he was sorry.

He couldn't, not now. Not when he was being forced to. He had a certain amount of pride. What could the judge do to him anyway? Janice Baker had told him about a place near Lake Tahoe for kids like him who'd gotten into a little bit of trouble. It didn't sound so bad, being in the pine trees and the mountains. It couldn't be much worse than the group home he was in now in Reno. The couple running the group home was only doing it for the money. They didn't even care enough to come to court with him.

His social worker appealed to Rick with a glance. He shook his head.

With a disapproving look at him, Janice Baker rose to her feet "Please take into account Your Honor, Rick's background. He's only fourteen. In the last four years, he has lived in foster homes in Fresno, Stockton, Merced, and Sacramento, California, as well as a foster home and a group home here in Reno. During that time he has been enrolled in six different schools...

The Maze. Copyright © by Will Hobbs. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 6-9-Fourteen-year-old Rick Walker feels that his life is a maze. He's been bounced around from one foster family to another and is sent to a detention center for hard-core juvenile offenders after committing a petty offense. After he reports corruption at the facility, the boy is forced to flee for his life and ends up in an isolated part of Utah's canyon country, near an area called the Maze. Here he forms a friendship with Lon, a biologist who is trying to reintroduce condors into the wild. The two work together, observing and assisting the birds, and Lon teaches Rick to hang glide. When they run afoul of a pair of nasty antigovernment types who are hiding a cache of weapons in the area, their lives are placed in danger. Certain elements of the plot are pretty conventional, appearing in countless young adult novels (troubled teen runs away and finds redemption with wise friend in a remote area). What sets this book apart is the inclusion of fascinating details about the condors and hang gliding, especially the action-packed description of Rick's first solo flight above the canyons in the face of an approaching thunderstorm. Many young readers will find this an adventure story that they can't put down.-Todd Morning, Schaumburg Township Public Library, IL

School Library Journal

Rick Walker, product of too many foster homes, is sentenced to serve six months in Blue Canyon Youth Detention Center near Las Vegas. His crime-throwing rocks at a stop sign-hardly seems to warrant such severe punishment. Aware that Rick is not a hardened criminal and concerned for the environment in which he will serve time, his social worker pleads unsuccessfully with the judge. The facility is worse than imagined. Except for the librarian, Rick has little support in a corrupt organization. When he learns that he is in danger from the other inmates, he escapes, eventually finding refuge with a bird biologist in the canyons of southwestern Colorado. As he learns to work with the giant condors that Lon, the biologist, is attempting to introduce into that area, he learns much about himself-his capacity for growth, endurance, and commitment. Ultimately, he must return to society, face the judge who had sentenced him, and resolve his future-but not before he has helped Lon to bring two dealers in illegal weapons to justice and negotiated the Maze, a harshly beautiful landscape of deep canyons and awesome pinnacles. This time, his social worker is not alone in attesting to his character, for Rick bids fair to extricate himself from the maze in which life has placed him. As in Far North, Hobbs spins an engrossing yarn, blending adventure with a strong theme, advocating the need for developing personal values. Again, as in the earlier book, there is a character who serves as mentor and explicator of those values-but the author's sure sense of story prevents him from overwhelming his narrative with philosophical commentary. .

Horn Book

A well-crafted, straight-up adventure story from Hobbs (Ghost Canoe, 1997, etc.). Confined to a juvenile detention center after traveling through a series of foster and group homes, Rick escapes after trying to blow the whistle on corrupt guards. His flight ends at an isolated camp on the edge of a bewildering system of canyons known as the Maze District, in Utah's Canyonlands National Park, where self-named biologist Lon Peregrino is nurturing six young condors bred in captivity. More accustomed to birds than people, Peregrino doesn't pry into Rick's past, allowing him instead to help keep the condors under observation while they acclimate themselves to new surroundings; he also fills Rick in on their history and behavior and, as the two become friends, teaches him to hang glide. As Rick eagerly soaks it all up, enter two rough locals, Carlile and Gunderson, with chips on their shoulders and a mean pit bull who immediately attacks and kills a condor. Lon suspects them of collecting Anasazi artifacts for the black market until Rick trails them to a cave full of pipe bombs and assault weapons. Hobbs sets the stage for a dramatic hang-glide rescue and throws in a major storm, after which the bad guys are collared and Rick is set on a more promising road. Both the breathtaking setting and the huge, rare birds are strong presences in this page-turner; Hobbs appends a condor release program's web address for interested readers. (Fiction. 11-13)

Kirkus Reviews

Dreams of flight have haunted Rick all his 14 years. Now, after several foster homes and a sentence to a rough detention center, he flees. His mad escape takes him to Lon, a man involved in a condor reintroduction program. Sala's voice, hard-boiled and Western-sounding, initially sounds too tough for this sensitive story, but he reads with supreme talent. Nuances of myth mingle smoothly with science and adventure. In fact, Sala's deft balance guides the narrative smoothly over some uneven patches of writing. Under Lon's tutelage, Rick, like the condors, learns to navigate the air. Sala propels us aloft, and Hobbs's descriptions of his apprenticeship in a glider become breathtaking. S.B.S. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine

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