Eleven-year-old Cara and her family are given 10 minutes to pack their belongings and flee their Pine Grove home when a wildfire threatens their town. Unfortunately, Cara's beloved dog, Mike, is nowhere to be found, so the family must leave without him. Following an agonizingly slow caravan to a safe zone, the family finds refuge, but Cara remains fixated on locating Mike. As anyone living in the West can tell you, summer wildfires are becoming the new normal. Green's free verse novel fairly brims with gripping descriptions of both the fire and Cara's taut emotional state, allowing readers a front-row seat to the devastation and fear that the fire generates. Also woven into the story are Cara's ruminations of home, many of which appear as answers to the crossword puzzles Cara solves to distract herself from her new reality. The ending offers some closure (spoiler alert: the house is a complete loss; Mike is found alive), but many recovery-related problems still remain. A fast-paced, compelling, and timely read.

When wildfires threaten their home, 11-year-old Cara and her family flee, unintentionally leaving Cara's dog, Mike, behind in this middle-grade novel in first-person, present-tense verse. When she was 9, Cara picked out Mike from the shelter, eschewing the adorable goldendoodle puppies and setting her heart instead on a one-eyed grown-up mutt despite her parents' misgivings. Green does a marvelous job of using backstory to deepen the commitment and love between dog and girl—Cara's insecurities about school, her older sister, and her need for the stability provided by her crossword-puzzle routine are all soothed by Mike's unflagging loyalty. But when wildfires rage close and the family has 10 minutes to leave, Mike goes missing. The skillful narrative turns white-knuckle tense as taut verse describes the family fleeing on a road clogged with cars and burning trees, while Cara desperately scans the roadside for Mike. Reaching safety, the family is hosted by the Bains, a brown-skinned couple with a white foster daughter, Jewel. (Cara and her family are implied white.) Jewel and Cara put a notice about Mike on the internet and notify shelters, but as the days tick by and Mike remains missing, Cara faces the wrenching possibility that he is gone—just as, as her family finds out, their house is gone and just as her best friend Heather, who is moving away, will soon be gone.Tense, heartwarming, and masterful. (Fiction. 8-11)