On Our Own

(Paperback)

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Description

A brother-sister duo, growing up at the end of a gravel road in the mountains of Montana, are worried sick. With radio silence from their dad, who took off a few years ago, and their mom now in trouble with the law due to her taking money from work to fix the family pickup truck, the siblings are left with limited options: hide or be separated in foster care. Full of anxiety, the kids fear what the foster care system will do with them, and they don't want to be taken away from their wonderful dog, Lightning. So, the sibling duo hatches a plan to use the family's backpacking equipment to hike to a high elevation where no one would think of looking for them. They hope to last the summer at the timberline, the zone where it's too cold most of the year, preventing tree growth. Catherine and Jim begin their trek up to high elevation, where they must cooperate to face the challenges posed by nature. They run into many obstacles, including an angry mama bear, creeks at flood stage, and a sudden snowstorm near the timberline that threatens their lives. However, they work together and can make it through the rough terrain of the mountains with some help from their beloved dog, Lightning.

Author Bio

Irene Allen is the pen name of E. Kirsten Peters, a woman geologist who has a background in writing for newspapers and authoring a variety of books. Under her pen name, her fiction books include four murder mysteries set in the Quaker meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Under her legal name, she has written a book about climate change from a geologist's perspective along with college-level textbooks in the earth sciences.
She has attended both Princeton and Harvard Universities, but Peters now lives in the inland Northwest, where she was raised. Kirsten retired from the faculty of Washington State University, where she taught freshman and sophomore-level students in the Geology Department. She has long admired children's literature, and this book results from her reading similar books, both as a child and as an adult.
"On Our Own" draws from the author's experiences hiking and backpacking in the Pacific Northwest. Being immersed in the wild has created some of her favorite memories and though she would still love to continue backpacking, scoliosis of her spine makes it impossible. However, she still does day hikes in the mountains of Oregon, Washington, and northern Idaho. Kirsten and her faithful mutt from the pound also do a lot of solo camping using her 25-year-old Dodge van as a camper. In short, she loves to be outdoors.
"On Our Own" is her debut children's book but her fifth book overall.

Julene Ewert is an artist living in the college town of Moscow, Idaho. Her work is extensive and varied, but illustrating a children's book was a change of pace for her. Simple line drawings give the basic idea of scenes in the story while still allowing readers to have room for their own imaginations.