Across the Desert by Dusti Bowling

 

I found Dusti Bowling's Across the Desert while browsing new middle grades novels on Goodreads. I was stocking up on books for my Middle Grades Mission and this one looked interesting enough, so I picked it up. I was in the mood for a short, easy read to kick off the month and this one was calling to me, so I decided to give it a try.

The plot of the novel follows a twelve-year-old girl named Jolene. She lives in Phoenix and her life has been tough lately. Her mother has become addicted to oxycodone following a bad car accident, and she spends most of her time sleeping and finding ways to acquire more pills. Money is extremely tight due to this. Jolene is outgrowing all of her clothes and there is very little food in the house. Jolene finds an escape from her troubles through watching a streamer that goes by the name of "Addie Earhart." Addie is a young pilot, who streams herself flying her ultralight plane around the Arizona desert. Jolene is usually Addie's only viewer, but that suits both girls just fine. They have struck up a tentative friendship online. Jolene doesn't have many friends, so she treasures this relationship.

As the story begins however, disaster strikes. Jolene tunes into Addie's stream as usual. As she watches, something goes wrong with Addie's ultralight and she crashes somewhere in the desert. The stream abruptly cuts off, leaving Jolene the only person who knows what happened. Frantic, she tries contacting the police and telling other adults her friend needs help, but when people hear that this was something that happened online to a person she doesn't really know, they stop taking her seriously. Determined to save her friend, Jolene sets out on a dangerous mission across the desert on her own to rescue her.

I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would, which made for a nice surprise. I have read a lot of middle grades books lately that I personally really liked, but didn't really think an average twelve-year-old kid would actually sit and read all the way through. This one was different. It moved quickly, it was very engaging, and it dealt with the kind of real world issues that young readers are interested in. Jolene's journey into the desert to try and save her friend felt genuinely harrowing, and the way Bowling described the heat, her thirst, and all the pain she was in had me wincing internally. It felt real and it felt dangerous and it made for a real page-turning experience. Jolene was an easy character to root for and I enjoyed watching her grow throughout the text. 

The element of Jolene's mother and her drug addiction was handled very well too. Bowling did a nice job of portraying the pain that both Jolene and her mother were in. She explains in the notes at the end of the book that she struggled as a kid with her own father's addiction to pain pills, and you could absolutely tell that she was writing from a place of experience throughout the text. There was this one point towards the end of the story where Jolene thinks that if she can complete this impossible task and rescue her friend, then maybe she can prove to her mom that she is worth getting sober for, and my goodness, that hit me right in the feelings.

So ultimately, I liked Across the Desert a lot more than I was expecting to. It was full of heart, had a very relatable protagonist, and was consistently engaging. I will most definitely be recommending this to students in the future and I think it's worth a read for anyone that enjoys middle grades realistic fiction. It was surprisingly solid!

Challenge Tally

Middle Grade Mission: 23/24

Total Books Read in 2022: 66