Product Description
Two brothers fight to save their grandmother’s land from developers in the third adventure of the Wilder Boys series.
When a run-in with the local bully means the boys risk losing their beloved dog, Cody, they hatch a plan to keep him safe. They’ll take him to live with their grandmother in the Sierra Nevada mountains. He’ll be safe there, and Grandma—who lives off the grid—will benefit from the companionship. But first they’ve got to figure out exactly where in the mountains she is.
Following clues left in postcards and pictures and using their keen senses of deduction and survival, they finally find her tract of land. But when they get there, they discover that a group of ill-intentioned developers is trying to bully her off her property. Do the boys have what it takes to outsmart the developers and save their grandmother’s beloved home?
About the Author
Trekking solo across the remotest corners of Wyoming and Montana as a young man, Brandon Wallace learned how to survive the hard way in the harshest conditions nature could throw at him. Having spent the subsequent two decades as a trail leader, passing on his knowledge to a generation of budding adventurers, he turned his hand to fictionalizing his experiences, and the Wilder Boys series was born.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1 1
Life is good.
Even in his own head it sounded totally cheesy, fourteen-year-old Jake Wilder thought with a grin. Like something you’d see stitched on a pillow in the nearby Grand Teton National Park’s souvenir shop. Or better yet, on a bumper sticker slapped onto one of the many off-road Jeeps that passed through the area on their way to explore the rugged mountains and trails.
But it was true.
The weekend was finally here. The sky was bright blue, and the air was fresh and warm. It was the perfect spring day in Wyoming. The kind when you’re just happy to be alive and part of the natural world.
Jake and his younger brother, Taylor, were playing Frisbee in their backyard with their friend Kim. The boys had gotten home from school about an hour earlier. Even though it was a forty-five-minute bus ride along the long, winding rural roads to their house, the boys didn’t mind. They had their journals to keep them busy, and the endless scenery outside their windows to entertain them. Kim had biked over from the ranch where she worked part-time, to join the brothers.
Twelve-year-old Taylor flicked the Frisbee in Jake’s direction. It went low, and the boys’ Jack Russell terrier, Cody, bounded across the grass and snagged it between his teeth. He trotted off with it proudly, tail held high, and sat in a patch of grass.
“Hey, Cody,” Jake said, laughing. “Give that back!”
He jogged over, retrieved the Frisbee, and threw it to Kim.
Kim caught it and zipped it to Taylor.
As the three horsed around, joking and laughing, Jake could hardly believe that just last year he, Taylor, and Cody had been on the run from their mom’s abusive boyfriend, Bull, and his goons. The boys had fled Pittsburgh and traveled here to Wyoming to find their estranged father, who’d been living in a remote house in the woods. But when they had later learned that their mother was in danger, they’d set off again to save her. They’d hopped freight trains, hitched rides, and hiked through dense forest. They’d survived an avalanche, faced down coyotes, criminals—and their greatest fears.
But they’d succeeded.
Now the family was reunited, living in a National Park Service house on the edge of the majestic Grand Teton National Park. Their dad, Abe, was a park ranger. And their mom, Jennifer, happy and no longer under Bull’s thumb, worked as a legal assistant in nearby Jackson.
Yeah, life was good.
“Earth to Jake!” Kim said. Jake blinked. Kim was waving the Frisbee, trying to get his attention.
“Sorry,” he said. “Daydreaming, I guess. Did you say something?”
“Yeah!” she said. “I asked when you and Taylor were going to sho
