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Trouble

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I don't think that there's any way for me to summarize the complex plot that makes up the novel TROUBLE, but I'm going to try.

Henry's father always said that if you stayed far enough away from Trouble, Trouble would never find you. It was what Henry and everyone else in his family believed. Until Trouble came to their lives in the form of Chay, a young Cambodian teen. Henry's older brother, Franklin, had been jogging on the night Chay hit him. Chay said it was an accident but their community thinks otherwise -- because Cambodians don't belong there and are the cause of every disaster.

Filled with anger of the accident, Henry, his best friend, and Black Dog set out to do the one thing Henry and Franklin had planned to do - climb Mt. Katahdin. They don't know how they're going to get there, how they're going to survive, or anything about climbing mountains, but they know they're going to do it.

As their journey continues, Henry runs into the one he hates most. Chay is also running from Trouble, and the once-enemies become allies. Henry begins to realize that family is not always what it seems -- and sometimes you just can't run from Trouble.

All I can say is that this is an amazing book and should be required reading in every classroom. Not only were the characters real and three-dimensional, each with their own quirks and problems, but the plot was also drawn out perfectly, with the right amount of details and action. You could feel yourself being taken into their world and, though this is technically a historical novel, I could barely tell because it seemed so real.

While reading this book, you will feel your heart breaking for Chay but you'll also be hoping that everything turns out okay for Henry's family. TROUBLE will take you on a roller coaster of emotions that you will never forget.

There's really no way for me to explain how much I loved this book. It's creative and original and just all-around amazing. Whether you're a middle school English teacher or a student, you should definitely pick this up on your next trip to the bookstore. Or heck, order it from Amazon today!

Reviewed by: Harmony

This is yet another wonderful work from a proven writer. While most people will market it as a book for young adults, a 50-something male like me found it to be a wonderful read. It's a book full of enough twists and turns to keep you turning the pages until you reach its remarkable conclusion. There's more than a fair bit of Trouble here, but also beautiful glimpses of Hope and Glory.

" 'It smells like you have a dog in here,' he said. 'A wet dog.' His voice was tight.
"It did not seem useful to Henry to lie about this.
"Especially since the dog came around the corner of the island and sat down, her head cocked off to the side so that the ear with the large missing piece stuck out.
"Now Henry's father's face grew tight, too.
" 'Get the dog out of here.' he said.
" 'I just saved her from drowning in the cove.'
" 'That was a mistake. You don't go looking for Trouble, Henry...Get away.'
"The last part was directed not at Henry but at the dog, who had come to sniff Henry's father to see if he might be at all interesting.
" 'Get away,' he said again. 'Black dog, get away.'
"The dog lifted up a paw.
"And Henry's father kicked her about as hard as a slippered foot can kick. Enough to skid her across the quarried stone floor.
"She did not cry out. When she stopped skidding, she turned on her back, put her feet up in the air, and showed her belly.
" 'Why did you ever bring that dog in here?' said Henry's father. 'Look at her. Who would want a black dog like that? Lying there, all beat up. Bleeding. Pieces of her missing.' He stopped. He leaned against the kitchen island and put his hands across his eyes. 'Pieces of her missing,' he said again. His body trembled, slowly, and then a little bit more, and a little more, like a building that is beginning to feel the earthquake starting under its foundations.
"Then his mouth opened, and though no sound came out, his silent howls filled the kitchen.
"Henry held his father. Tight. Very tight. He felt the black dog come back to them. He felt his father reach down to scratch behind her chipped ear. He saw the dog roll her face with pleasure against his father's untied robe -- and hoped that his father would not see the pus and blood that she left there.
"They stood, the three of them, together in the kitchen, and two things happened.
"First, Black Dog had a home and a name.
"Second, the telephone rang. It was the hospital."

Set in the 1980s, TROUBLE is the story of Henry Smith, a middle school student growing up on the northern coast of Massachusetts in a large house which has been inhabited by his ancestors for 300 years. Henry's older brother, Franklin, and his sister, Louisa, both attend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Preparatory High School in Blythbury-by-the-Sea, the town that has grown up around their ancestral home. Big brother Franklin is the golden boy, popular and athletic, who can do no wrong -- or at least that is how it seems at first glance.

As he did with THE WEDNESDAY WARS, my favorite children's book of 2007, Gary Schmidt creates an extraordinary work of historical fiction that melds zany humor with unfathomable, brutal history with the intricacies of growing up in a family. As with THE WEDNESDAY WARS, he incorporates classical literature. (In THE WEDNESDAY WARS Holling Hoodhood was dealing with Shakespeare; here Henry is wrestling with Chaucer.) Furthermore, in both books there are adult characters who epitomize prejudice and stupidity in the world. The character in THE WEDNESDAY WARS whom I most hated was Micky Mantle. Here, in TROUBLE, it is Dr. Sheringham, principal of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Prep.

Trouble comes when Franklin is out running one evening and he is struck by a vehicle, causing his loss of an arm and critical brain damage, and requiring that he be maintained in a comatose state. The driver of the vehicle is arrested. We know little about that driver until a pretrial hearing lays out an apparent mystery to be unraveled.

The driver of the vehicle is Chay Chouan. Chay and his parents are survivors of the Cambodian massacres that took place under the Khmer Rouge; Chay has experienced his sister being shot in front of him and his brother being taken by force. Having barely survived, and having made their way out of Cambodia to the United States, Chay's family has settled into Merton, a formerly-abandoned mill town that has been revitalized by an influx of Cambodian refugees. Chay's parents, who have founded a family masonry and stonework business, want the best for Chay. And so it is -- we learn during the pretrial hearing -- that Chay's parents had gotten him enrolled at Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Preparatory High School in Blythbury-by-the-Sea, where Chay has been repeatedly beat up and had his property destroyed by a group of students led by golden boy Franklin Smith.

And -- if we hadn't previously gotten the drift -- it becomes abundantly clear that Chay and Louisa (Henry and Franklin's sister) have been spending time together and are in love. One might well conclude that knowledge of this relationship has contributed to Franklin's neanderthal behavior.

It is during the pretrial hearing, when all of this is revealed, that Dr. Sheringham's testimony also makes it crystal clear that the administration has fully sanctioned the abuse meted out upon Chay by Franklin and his cronies.

And so readers are provided this information, along with the fact that Chay claims to have fallen asleep behind the wheel, and that he bandaged Franklin's arm with his shirt before racing off to get medical assistance. (Remember, this is the 1980s. There are no cell phones for calling 911.)

The question is, with knowing the way that Franklin and his henchmen have savagely beaten and abused Chay, might Chay have purposely or unconsciously struck Franklin?

And how might you feel if you'd had a life like Chay's and found yourself behind the wheel in such circumstances?

"In the dark, in the light, always imagining her face, remembering her face in the moments before the accident. Her laugh. Her easy wave. How her wave had been the first thing about her that told him all he needed to know.
"How had his father guessed? 'Remember you were Cambodian before you were American.' And so he had taken his dog to teach him what he had to learn. He beat her. He made him watch. He starved her. He made him watch. 'Learn how to be strong,' he said. Then he took her away. 'She is drowned,' he said when he returned. 'Learn to be cold inside.'
"But this is not what he learned.
"He had not realized how much he had missed her face."

Adding TROUBLE to WEDNESDAY WARS and the Prinz Honor and Newbery Honor book LIZZIE BRIGHT AND THE BUCKMINSTER BOY makes for quite an amazing trifecta for Gary Schmidt.

Henry Smith's family has been living in the picturesque town of Blythbury-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts since 1678. His father has always told him: "If you build your house far enough away from Trouble, then Trouble will never find you." It is a motto that seems to have served the Smith family well, until the night a pickup truck runs down Henry's older brother, Franklin, and puts him into a coma.

The driver of the pickup truck--a schoolmate of Franklin's--is a young Cambodian refugee, and the tragedy quickly ignites racial tensions that have been slowly brewing beneath the pretty veneer of Blythbury-by-the-Sea. Amidst the fury of the town, the volatile relations between Blythbury-by-the-Sea and nearby Merton (known as Little Cambodia), as well as his family's private grief, Henry sets out to find answers at the only place he thinks can yield him something--anything: Mt. Katahdin. The mountain he and Franklin had planned to climb before the accident.

With his best friend and his newly adopted dog, Black Dog, Henry sets off for Katahdin and runs immediately into the only person willing to give hitchhikers with a dog a ride: Chay Chouan, the driver in the pickup truck that fateful night. As they make their way to Katahdin together, Henry begins to realize that perhaps his father was wrong, that perhaps the more you run from Trouble, the closer Trouble exists, that perhaps his brother might not have been the perfect American Hero that Henry had thought him to be.

Gary D. Schmidt has written a lyrical novel dealing with grief, family, and the unpleasant truths that might lie within the people we love and admire. In Trouble, readers see how racism still runs rampant in the hearts of men and women. While I commend Gary D. Schmidt for tackling this subject, I could not find myself completely enjoying the book. It was slow in places and oddly paced. I found Henry's (and his best friend's) characters believable, but for the rest of the cast (including Henry's family and Chay Chouan) I was disappointed. The secondary characters felt as if they had stepped straight out of a character template and into the novel. That said, Gary D. Schmidt is an accomplished writer with a beautiful sense of language.

I would recommend this book to patient readers and readers interested in books with rich description. Readers who are looking for multicultural perspectives will also be interested in this book. As much as I would like to recommend Trouble heartily, I can only give a lukewarm nod of approval for Trouble.

For an adult reader, TROUBLE is no trouble at all, but for younger, more reluctant readers, its many-layered plot, occasional drifts into description, and near-300 pages may prove more of a challenge. More advanced readers, however, should be fine.

Set on Boston's north shore in a town called Blythbury-by-the-Sea (an ironically "blithe" echo of the wealthy seaside town, Manchester-by-the-Sea), the basic premise is about a boy, Henry, whose older brother Franklin is mowed down on the road while running. The driver? Allegedly a fellow teen named Chay Chouan -- a kid who had experienced "run in's" at school with Franklin. Coincidence? In this book (which suffers from a bit of "coincidence-itis") almost nothing is, but it will take many pages to find out.

After some well done hospital scenes at Franklin's bedside (he is in a coma) and a brisk courtroom scene (Chay's trial), the novel switches gears and becomes a road novel. Franklin had been planning to take Henry to hike Katahdin, the highest peak in Maine, and Henry vows to complete the challenge on his own. Except his friend Sanborn (who carries his dad's credit card) comes along. And Henry's dog, Black Dog (its name), which he happened to find drowning in the sea while kayaking one day. And Chay, who happens to be driving by and stops to pick up the hitchhiking boys and their dog.

If you're willing to overlook these coincidences (and others that I cannot reveal without damaging the plot's surprises), you'll enjoy Schmidt's writing, such as this from the Katahdin scenes: "The wind that had pushed the mist down the mountain was busy drying it out below them, so that by the time they had finished repacking what was left of lunch -- which was not much, except for a few sardines -- they could look down the mountain and see only foggy tatters that clutched the darker clumps of trees and were doing what they could to stave off oblivion. Above them, the sky really was a glass pane, and it really did seem that if they could reach the peak, they could stretch up and squeak their fingers on its clean and level expanse."

Also, the book offers many lessons on prejudice as it explores Chay's background as an immigrant from war-ravaged Cambodia. Not only does Chay have trouble adjusting to life in a well-off, WASPish Massachusetts town, he runs into big trouble in Maine where some drunken fishermen decide he is Vietnamese and part of the reason they lost work as fishermen down in Gloucester.

Recommended for more advanced readers, who should score it a 4- or 5-star effort. Reluctant readers might not make it to the peak, however, and may, in the end, look up and see only three stars shining over the troublesome mount we call Katahdin.

plus SO much more. I can't begin to explain how much I adore this book. I thought Wednesday Wars was near-perfect, but having just finished Trouble, I don't know which one I like better. Schmidt is an amazingly gifted writer. His imagery is so evocative, yet tangible. His characters are accessible, likeable and still complex enough to be real. I am a thirty-something mother of three and found this book to be an engaging, believable story of a boy trying to make sense of his life when his perfect New England, prep school world comes crashing down around him. Schmidt draws racial and cultural prejudices into question by encouraging the reader to see the human story behind someone labeled as "Other" (i.e. "not like me/us"). And he deftly explores the themes of redemption, forgiveness, and how we deal with grief both collectively and personally. For me, this book is the young adult version of Cry the Beloved Country. This is a must-read for young adults and adults. It will make you laugh, cry, and cheer for what is decent and good in human beings. My favorite line from the book: "And so Henry know something else, too. The world is Trouble . . . and Grace. That is all there is."

Mr. Schmidt writes beautiful books, and while some themes seem to trickle through all the books, all of his books are hugely different. The ability of an author to be that versatile and sensitive and creative is impressive. There are a lot of things to like about this book and some great things to discuss, with say a class or a youth reading group.

I love the relationships that Schmidt creates, the relationship between Louisa and Henry, I am touched by the friendship between Sanborn and Henry, even Henry's relationships to his parents is so real.

This book is probably for the 14 and 15 year olds. This should get a Newberry nom. I highly recommend this book!

This story contained a lot of very lyrical, writerly language. Beautiful descriptions of the sea, of grief, of the dog, of the mountain (Katahdin) of so many things.

I got the impression this was supposed to take place in the late 70's, or possibly early 80's. I'd heard that the story takes place in Maine and deals with Cambodian immigration. Having grown up in Maine around Cambodian refugees myself, that was enough to hook me right there. It's not terribly often that Maine shows up as a locale (One Morning in Maine by Robert McCloskey, aside) in children's books so I was interested to see what Schmidt would have to say about it, and how the audiobook reader, Jason Culp, would make it sound.

I don't feel that Culp completely got the accent. It turns out the family is from Massachusetts. He sounds like a man trying to do a Boston accent and ALMOST getting it right. But it is very slightly off. He completely and totally got the pronunciation of "Penobscot" wrong, but everything else sounded passable. To anyone not from the area, it probably sounds great. The myriad of New England accents, subtly but noticeably shifting every few square miles are notoriously difficult to nail down.

The protagonist, Henry, from an upper crust New England family, is struggling to come to terms with things after his life falls apart. Franklin, his athletic older brother that he's idolized, is in a horrendous car accident when Cambodian Chay Chouan hits him with his truck. At first, Franklin is in a coma and has lost his arm, but eventually he succumbs to his injuries and passes away. Henry rescues a black dog and together, he and the dog work on healing themselves. As the small town of Blythebury-by-the-Sea erupts in racial tension over the incident, Henry decides to leave town. He plans to hike the summit of Mt. Katahdin in Maine, something his brother always wanted to do, accompanied by his private school classmate, Sanborn. They hitchhike and are picked up by -- of all people, Chay, who is also headed out of town. Henry really struggles with his grief and anger, but as he gradually realizes that Chay has been in love with his sister Louisa, he manages to forgive Chay for the accident. After a cathartic run-in with some racist Vietnam vets, a hike up Katahdin, the steady devotion of Black Dog and a reunion with his concerned parents, Henry is able to feel much more at peace.

In many ways, because of the use of allegory, foreshadowing and other literary devices, as well as the heavily all-male perspective, this story reminded me very much of of many of the classics studied in high school such as A Separate Piece, The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird.

I had the feeling that this would be a "boy and dog" book the moment Black Dog came on the scene, but that didn't seem to completely be the case. The other characters, especially Sanborn, end up surprising us with a lot to contribute as well. Schmidt "shines a light" on any potential problems by having the characters bring everything right out in the open. The kids at school tease Henry for giving his dog the most ridiculously obvious name, "Black Dog" and he defends it. Within a few minutes, the name which sounded so silly seems the most natural and perfect name ever. All the plot points wind up tightly, but Schmidt writes skillfully enough to prevent it from seeming too unbelievable. It's a clockwork kind of book. Everything is neccessary. Black Dog turns out to be (of course) Chay's dog, who is now Henry's dog and an important element in healing the grief that troubles them both.

I loved this book, and I loved hearing it in audio format (despite the slightly imperfect accent) it made my long commute go by in a snap.

The complex plot that is Gary Schmidt's Trouble is full of twists and turns. The story revolves around Henry, a middle school student who lives in Blythbury-by-the-Sea, a town his family has lived in for generations. One day Henry's older brother, Franklin, is hit by a truck while out for a jog. The driver of the truck is Chay Chouan, a young Cambodian refugee who attended the same school as Franklin. The accident creates social and racial tension that leaves Henry torn, and is amplified once his brother dies from the accident. Unsure of how to deal with his big brother's death, Henry sets out with his best friend and his dog to climb Mt. Katahdin, which he and his brother had planned on climbing together prior to the accident. On the way they to the mountain, they decide to hitchhike and are picked up by none other than Chay, who seems to be fighting his own demons. The rest of the journey is an unexpected tale of anger, friendship, and forgiveness that only Gary Schmidt could tell.

The book is written in an easy to follow format, and would definitely appeal to middle school students, though older crowds will easily find this novel enjoyable. There are plenty instances of humor, sarcasm, and soul searching. Though classified as young adult literature, the style of writing does not leave the reader feeling as though s/he read a book aimed at a "young" audience. The language use is realistic and satisfying.

Schmidt's reputation of young adult literature excellence really shines through in this novel. It is a must-read!!

The opening pages of Trouble set the blue-blooded backdrop of Henry Smith's world, but that is immediately shattered when his brother is gravely injured in a car accident. This multi-layered coming of age story explores racism and the American dream through the lens of Henry's grief and coming to terms with his brother's death. The final chapters will have you desperately turning pages as all the loose ends are skillfully tied up.

I was surprised to read that this book was set in the 1980s-- it seemed so completely current and relevant to today.