Leave No Trace by Mindy Mejia

Title: Leave No Trace

Author: Mindy Mejia

Read by:  Patricia Rodriguez

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Length: Approximately 9 hours and 56 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster.  Thank-you!

A man and his 9-year-old son leave for a camping trip in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota and are never seen again.  Their campsite is found destroyed by bears and it is thought that they were killed in the wild.  Ten years later, Lucas Blackthorn is found breaking into an outfitter store in Ely Minnesota.  Where has he been all this time and where is his father Josiah?

Lucas is brought to Duluth and put into a mental institution.  Maya is a speech therapist at the institution who was once a patient there.  Will she be able to break through Lucas’s reserve and determine where he has been and what happened to his father?

Leave No Trace is written by Mindy Mejia who also wrote the wonderful Everything You Want Me to Be, which was a perfect suspense novel.  Leave No Trace didn’t quite measure up to Everything You Want Me to Be, but it was a good suspense novel.  It dealt with abandonment and a search for one’s mother.  It also dealt with the definition of “crazy.”  Who is the crazy one when you really start to look at people?  Is wanting to live without people and without a roof crazy?  I like how the story was told peeling off layer after to layer to found out Maya’s past as well as Josiah’s over time.  The book was narrated mostly by Maya, but there were a few chapters from Josiah’s point of view as well.

I also really enjoyed the setting of the novel.  I live in Wisconsin and am from Michigan originally.  My husband is from Minnesota.  I have been to Duluth and north, but I have not been to the Boundary Waters yet.  I plan to get there some day!  I thought it was the perfect setting for a place where one could lose oneself.

Patricia Rodriquez did a fine job as narrator of this audiobook.  It was an engaging story that was very interesting to listen to on my long weekly commute to Milwaukee.  I recommend this book on audio.

Overall, Leave No Trace was a wonderful suspense story with a great setting and interesting characters.  It was also a great audiobook to keep you riveted with the story on a long drive.