Leepike Ridge

“‘I don’t know where to start,’ Tom said.

‘According to some people, the beginning is a good place.’

Tom puffed his cheeks. The beginning? His day dying. Jeffrey Veatch chasing his mom. Refrigerator deliverymen. Packing foam.”

At eleven years old, Tom already has quite a few stories to tell. Leepike Ridge is just a piece of Tom’s story–Tom’s life after his father’s death. It’s his life with his mother in their home on top of a rock in which he misses his father terribly and loathes his mother’s new boyfriend Jeffrey Veatch. And it’s his struggle to survive and to find the light again when he is pulled underwater metaphorically by the weight of his burdens and also literally by the current.

This struggle for show more survival begins in earnest when Tom decides to ride the packing foam down the local stream in the middle of the night (he can’t sleep after being informed that his mother is “considering” Jeffrey’s proposal). Tom awakens to being pulled underwater into a series of underground caverns from which there is seemingly no escape. This fact becomes all the more trenchant when Tom meets Reg, a man who has been stuck underground for three years with little light, with negligible diet variation (crawdads, crawdads, and more crawdads), and with no company save for the occasional visit from a partially lame canine named Argus. Reg tells Tom of his underground lair, “The hard part wasn’t finding this place; that was an accident. The hard part is staying alive, wanting to stay alive when you can’t get back out.”

Yet, together Tom and Reg (and Argus the dog) help each other to hope and to search for a way out. Reg tells Tom, “If you die trying, I’ll die alongside you. It would be a nice change of pace from firelight and pasty-looking crawdads.”

Above ground, Tom’s mother Elizabeth refuses to give up hope that Tom’s still alive. In searching for Tom, she discovers that her husband’s death may not have been accidental. Throw in a villainous group of men who pretend to search for Tom but are actually searching for treasure and who will stop at nothing to get their hands on it and a sinister dimension is added to an already gripping mystery-survival story. N.D. Wilson’s first novel for young children is a riveting adventure that cries out to have its pages turned to the very end in order to find out whether Tom will ever again see the light of day.

Fans of adventure-survival stories like those of Gary Paulsen, Will Hobbs, Harry Mazer, and Jean Craighead George (as well as fans of the more classic adventure authors such as Daniel Defoe, Robert Louis Stevenson, and H. Rider Haggard) will likely feel they’ve struck gold in reading Leepike Ridge.

Takeaway quote:

Reg: “After three years down here, I’ve not learned too much. But one thing I do know is that our bellies aren’t big enough for revenge. It turns sour and eats you up. We’ll get out, but we’ll get out for the sun, the moon, and mothers, not for small-souled enemies, though we’ll deal with them when we get there.” show less

Thomas Hammond has always lived next to Leepike Ridge, but he never imagined he might end up lost beneath it! The night Tom's schoolteacher comes to dinner and asks Tom's mother to marry him, Tom slips out of the house and escapes down a nearby stream on a floating slab of packing foam. The night and stars lull Tom to sleep, and when he wakes, he has ridden his foam raft all the way to the ridge, where the stream dives underground. Flung over rapids and tossed through chasms, Tom finally hits shore, sore but alive. What Tom finds under Leepike Ridge - a dog, a flashlight, a castaway, a tomb, and buried treasure - will answer questions he hadn't known to ask, and change his life forever. Now, if only he can find his way home again. . . show more .

In the grand tradition of "Robinson Crusoe," "Hatchet," and "Tom Sawyer," N. D. Wilson's first book for young readers is a remarkable adventure, a journey through the dark and back into the light. show less

Summary -
Tom's father is dead, and he and his mother Elizabeth live alone in an old house chained to the top of a rock above a river. After a frustrating dinner with his mother's suitor, Tom takes a midnight walk to clear his head. But what starts out as innocent fun and a floating nap on a piece of packing foam turns into a wild ride down the river, under and over a few waterfalls - and into the mountain itself! It's get out or die in the cavity of a mountain, and with a dead mean lying on the underground shore next to him, Tom's determination to live is fierce. And what he finds on his journey home may be worth much more than hoards of gold.

My thoughts -
G.E.N.I.U.S. Have I ever told you how I feel about this author? The six letters show more above sum it up nicely. Maybe even perfect. Yes, to me, his books are the greatest, and that's saying something, when I have sooo many favorites. I just can't get enough of his books...his level of awesomeness far surpasses that of all else.

This is my second time reading this book, and even now I know I'll never get tired of the story it holds. It's so amazing, from front to back. The writing is like, the best. EVER. The way Wilson views the world if phenomenal (and this is shown by the way he describes things).

This book will have you holding your breath the whole time, but not in the way you are probably thinking. Don't expect nonstop action; do expect other forms of intensity, such as mystery, intrigue, and suspense. Rationally trying to find your way out of the inside of the mountain, and how to live on the inside of a mountain for a few years, is extremely gripping, especially if you might be flooded in, and drown, and never get out until the water carries your dead body through its secret tunnels and into the light of day you died to find. That is the kind of suspense in store. I loved it; I hope you will, too.

This book as been compared to Robinson Crusoe, King Solomon's Mines, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and The Odyssey. I agree. If you've read any of those and liked them, try this adventure. If you haven't read them, or maybe you did and didn't like them, still try this adventure. You never know...and I definitely wouldn't want you to miss out on the possibility of liking one of my favorite books EVER.

Character notes -
These characters (like all of N. D. Wilson's characters) are........genius. (Did you guess?? Haha!) They're tangible, wonderful friends (or enemies) who all have a past, a future, a life of their own.

Tom is one lovable kid. He did exactly what any 11-year-old would have done with a slab of packing foam - tried to float on it. He is consistent and smart and content with the world. He and his mother know each other well, and they both miss his father.

Reg, also, was awesome. I can't imagine the story without him. He is Tom's perfect counterpart in the story and he also helps to form the perfect ending for the story.

My favorite characters are (1. Elizabeth, Tom's mother. I could picture her walking through tall grasses, picking up her skirts, her hair in a messy bun; (2. Phil Leiodes. The bad guy. He added a lot to the story and made things a whole lot more complicated; and (3. Jeffrey Veatch. Stupid, selfish idiot that he was, I just can't help but laugh at his ridiculousness. I mean, when someone is described as having a saggy chest, chapped leeches for lips, and skinny-man fat beneath the chin, you can't help but laugh.

Story notes -
This story is rich. Simple and fresh, but so, so rich. It holds life and the desire to live; it holds friendships and mystery and a boy missing his father, wanting a father figure. It's about a mother's love, cheeky and selfish suitors, and a man who must pay the price for his crimes. All this piled into 250 pages, and still it's simple and easy to read and understand. It's amazing how Wilson does this.

I love the humor this story holds as well. In the face of Tom being lost under the mountain and the possibility of him never getting out, you have Jeffrey, who says and does the funniest things. The sarcastic undertone never fails to give me a giggle, even when things are intense. And after a giggle break, things go right back to being suspenseful.

Every scene is excellently executed and written, in every sense.

Summing it up -
Livening. Spirited, vivacious. I could smell the grass, feel the wind, and hear the rush of the river. I felt and saw complete darkness underground, and the heat of Reg's torch scorched my skin. I held my breath for more than a minute, swimming in pitch black water to get through cracks in the rock. I look forward to doing it all over and over and over again! Enjoy - feast! show less

Gr 4-8Eleven-year-old Tom Hammond lives with his widowed mother in a windblown old house chained to the top of a gigantic rock. One night, unable to sleep, he heads down to the stream that borders their property, where he has left a heavy piece of refrigerator packing foam. What starts out as aimless drifting down quiet water turns deadly when Tom's foam slab feeds into the rougher mountain water and he is pulled under a rock, ending up in an underwater cavern. The secrets he discovers while attempting to find his way out of the mountain caves are surprising, yet seamlessly executed. While Leepike Ridge is primarily an adventure story involving murder, treachery, and betrayal, Wilson's rich imagination and his quirky characters are a show more true delight. Tom's feisty mother will not believe that her son has drowned despite the evidence to the contrary, and her run-ins with various townspeople are jewels in themselves. There are enough twists and turns in the plot to keep both seasoned and reluctant readers turning the pages. Think Mark Twain with a contemporary and utterly captivating twist.Kim Dare, Fairfax County Public Schools, VA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. show less

When I was young, I always wished I had a cave nearby, a la Tom Sawyer and others. I would retreat to this cave in order to be alone and to do Serious Solitude Thinking. Having no local caverns, I was forced to revert to burying a pen and a notebook in a plastic bag in the woods behind our house, which could be dug up in Solitude Moments should profound thoughts need to be jotted down. But the trees were rather sparse, and you could totally see the neighbor's backyard from my fortress, and it just generally sucked way more than a cave would have.

Now, had this recent jolly underground book been around, I might not have been so keen on a cave (although you'd think Tom Sawyer would have been a bit cautionary, too).

Leepike Ridge has a show more fast-moving river that acts all innocuous as it flows past your house and then SPEEDS UP and HEADS UNDERGROUND for a long time before bottoming out in a dank underground pond, complete with bodies from previous spelunkers and treasure-hunters. Naturally, the grouchy son of a possibly-remarrying mom would hop on to a piece of refrigerator foam and accidentally end up there, with no apparent way of ever getting out. Scary, suspenseful and fun, with a great archaeological-mystery, avenge-my-dead-dad subplot. But what a stupid cover, and not the world's greatest title either. Much better than expected. show less

This is a very different sort of adventure story. A 12-year-old boy named Tom, disgruntled at his mother's relationship with a man he doesn't like, heads downriver on a raft (really the foam packing from a refrigerator box) and ends up under a mountain and utterly trapped, along with a corpse, a dog, and - eventually - a man who had been similiarly trapped for over 3 years. There are gritty details - nefarious "treasure-hunters," a plucky mom, a three-legged dog, and plenty of real danger - but what sets this book apart from other adventure/survival stories are the small details. The dialogue has a slightly different edge to it that snags the attention, the adults are as fully formed and unique as Tom, and ALL the dogs have show more personalities that are perfectly drawn with just an offhand sentence or two. It isn't perfect - there are odd plot stops and starts and not everything is explained satisfactorily - but it's a damn good story. show less

2023 - the single thing i remembered from this book 3 years ago was "you should look under the bed" and i did instantly just do upon re-finishing this book that but unfortunately under my bed is just a pile of boxes and clothes. cringe and fail i want a cool tunnel system running under my house (not that i AM home right now, but the sentiment still stands). anyway kinda wack and insane that it's been 3.5 years since early '20. banger books as always. dogs? absolutely.
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2020 - short & fun - very Wilson-esque
ANGUSSSSSS