The Atlas of Us

Starred review from October 30, 2023
Ever since she failed to graduate high school, was fired from her job at a friend’s floral shop, and her father died from cancer, Atlas James has been feeling directionless. The only guidepost she seems to have is the Bear Creek Community Service program; while some teens are court-mandated to participate in the four-week project cleaning up Sierra mountain hiking trails, Atlas—whose father loved the mountains—volunteers, feeling as if attending is her only chance to honor him and turn her life around. When Atlas arrives, she’s given the nickname Maps (“The nicknames are a blank slate”). It’s a difficult learning curve: she can’t pitch a tent, and the work is exhausting. But the experience is also inspiring and invigorating, and though Atlas’s grief doesn’t disappear, her growing friendships with her assigned trail mates—and her on-again-off-again attraction with intense trail leader King—help lighten the load. Dwyer (Some Mistakes Were Made) crafts stirring and organic character interactions via Atlas and her trail mates’ good-humored banter, as well as her electric chemistry with King. Combined with the lushly depicted wilderness setting, Atlas’s fledgling relationships emphasize how connection can bloom unexpectedly—and powerfully—even amid grief. Atlas and King read as white. Ages 14–up. Agent: Sarah Landis, Sterling Lord Literistic.

Starred review from October 15, 2023
After her father dies, a teen drops out of high school, loses her job, and embarks on a four-week journey through the California backcountry. Everyone in the Bear Creek Community Service program is assigned a nickname as part of starting over with "a blank slate." No one needs to know your past or whether you're there by choice or court order. All that matters is the present: working on hiking trail maintenance. For Atlas James, or Maps, as she's now known, it's an escape from the poor decisions she's made since her father's death from cancer and a tribute to him. One of his dying wishes was to hike the Western Sierra Trail with her--the same one she'll now be spending the summer working on with Books, Junior, Sugar, and King. Maps is immediately drawn to group leader King, and as secrets are revealed, the two act as magnets, attracting and repelling one another. Maps' tangible grief is centered as she copes with the loss of the only person who understood her and always had her back. Gradually, as they clear brush, dig drainage, and battle the backcountry and their pasts, a sense of family is forged among the crew. The palpable romantic tension between King and Maps propels this beautifully written story. Junior is coded Black; other major characters read white. Gripping and authentic in the ways it portrays grief and shows how moving forward means having to let go. (Fiction. 14-18)

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January 1, 2024
Grades 9-12 Atlas has not dealt well with her father's illness and death from cancer. Since then, she has made a string of poor choices, and as a result, she enters a community service program run by her father's best friend, Joe, where the participants hike various trails in the Western Sierras while cleaning them up and repairing problem areas. They choose names for themselves that provide a break from their pasts. Atlas, now Maps, is assigned to a group comprising Sugar, another girl, and three boys: Junior, Books, and King. The hiking and the work are grueling at first, but the group forms a bond, with Atlas becoming drawn to King. As the end of the trail nears, Atlas tries to cope with the idea of leaving her friends and returning to her old life. Dwyer meaningfully shows how Atlas, who brims with pain over her father's death, gradually learns how to live with her loss. The analogy of life as a trail that needs maintenance and care applies here, and Atlas learns that with both, you have to keep going.

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April 5, 2024

Gr 10 Up-Atlas wants to forget that her father died last year when she was a junior in high school-before she dropped out, before she lost her job at the flower shop, and before her mother stopped being invincible. Atlas pretends-or lies, as she admits to herself-that she's okay. Secretly, however, she's kept her father's list of last wishes, because one was to hike the Western Sierra mountain range with her. She was just a kid when he taught her to love these mountains. Now, more than a year after his passing, she's accepted into a rigorous peer-led summer conservation program in this exact location. She's dropped off by her mother, sulky and silent. But her commitment to return without her Dad makes plain that she's determined to move forward, even if she can't see it. One who does is King, a trail leader who buries his attraction to Atlas for his own reasons. Telling the truth becomes a prerequisite for romance as they edge towards the chasm of deep feelings that each wants to excavate. Lasting friendships formed on the trail also rescue Atlas from this confusing time of anger and denial. Of her peers she observes, "They make loving seem easy." It isn't; neither is getting over loss and grief. Dwyer's open approach to both ends of this emotional spectrum invites mature readers into the discussion. Most characters cue white; a secondary character is gay. VERDICT This romance, with gentle but explicit sex scenes, deals realistically with teens' denial after the loss of a loved one. Recommended for mature YA audiences of all collections.-Georgia Christgau

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