Though only twelve years old and without a day A NOVEL spent in a classroom, June is just as comfortable reading and thinking deeply as she is hunting game and chopping wood. Thanks to her rustic but joyful life in the Blue Mountains of Washington State, June is growing into a young woman who combines the best traits of her scholarly mother and her practical father. But when welfare workers and government officials threaten to take June away from her parents, her idyllic childhood is thrown into dangerous turmoil. To defend their way of life, June and her father must run. They escape into the mountains on horseback with nothing to protect them but her agile mind and survivalist skills. Will everything June's parents taught her be enough to outrun the danger? Or will she be taken away from the only home and family she's ever known?