Hidden

Around this time of year families and children start wrapping up summer activities and begin to prepare for a new school year. All those summer camps, weeklong or month-long, come to an end. In 2011 Helen Frost published Hidden, a novel that will make me look at those summer camps in a slightly different way.

When I picked up Hidden, I had only a few minutes, and lots of deadlines. I was merely going to scan a chapter to get a sense of the book. Do not make this mistake with Hidden! Unable to do anything else until I found out how the story ends, I finally put the book down several hours later after I had missed a deadline or two. I’ve had reports of other readers, adults and children ages eleven through fourteen, who have had the same experience.

In Hidden, Helen Frost works in free-verse format to relate the story of Wren Abbott. In first person, Wren tells us how as a happy eight-year-old girl in a pink dress she waits for her mother in the family minivan. But in one of those terrible twists of fate, a bank robber seizes the van for a getaway and drives the car to his home. Wren finds herself alone, in a dangerous position, and must use her wits to survive. She is aided, in part, by the man’s daughter Darra, who brings food to the girl now held captive in their garage. Wren escapes and unintentionally helps the police locate the criminal. Darra’s world is now turned upside down; she doesn’t understand what happened that day and wonders who is to blame for her father’s incarceration. Her parents? Herself? Or Wren?

When they are fourteen, Wren and Darra end up at the same month-long summer camp in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. What should have been a wonderful camping experience for Wren becomes a nightmare. Suddenly she must relive the events from six years earlier and come to terms with her past. Darra must face her own guilt and anger, her feelings about her father who is now divorced from her mother, and her unanswered questions about the events of that fateful day.

Told in alternating sections by Darra and Wren, the book moves to a completely credible but breathtaking finish. Showing how childhood trauma can shape character and give strength, the story presents two totally believable and likable young girls, struggling to make sense of their past.

For my taste, Helen Frost has emerged as our greatest living craftsperson of verse novels.  Hidden maintains her reputation in that arena. In the end she shows readers how they can revisit the verse and find other details hidden there. After reading the book in one gulp, both adults and children will want to go back to this complex book and learn more about the characters.

Thank you Helen Frost. In novels such as Diamond Willow, Crossing Stones, and Hidden, you have crafted books that treat young readers with respect. Hidden is another Frost gem—don’t miss it!

Here’s a passage from Hidden:

Buddy Board

I’m getting into the routine. After lunch every day, we go back to the
cabin for rest hour, and I lie down on my bed facing
the wall. Huh? What’s this, sticking out from under
my pillow? A yellow envelope with “Darra” written in perfect girl’s
handwriting, all round and even. I try to hid it
and open it at the same time (not too hard because
no one notices me much). At least someone here knows my name.
But who? The card is all sunflowers
and butterflies. My hands shake when
I read the short note inside: If you don’t talk about who I was
or how you knew me, I won’t talk about
you or your dad. It isn’t signed, but I know
who it has to be from. I turn around just enough to look up at Wren
in the mirror, but she doesn’t glance down.
Is she going to pretend she didn’t write it?