Central Kansas Library System

Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag." In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard. Her father distrusted the medical establishment, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse....

When ten-year-old Jess McConnell meets a new friend on her trip to the ancient Maya ruins in Belize, she is invited on an eco-adventure and makes some real discoveries about the dangers in the Belizean jungle, about the people who have lived there since long ago, and about herself.