Last Summer in Agatha

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Like Holubitsky’s first young-adult novel, Alone at Ninety Foot
(1999), this book visits the theme of unresolved grief, but this time
via one of the secondary characters. Almost 16, Vancouverite Rachel
Bennett is spending the summer working for relatives in Agatha, a small
southern Alberta community. In her free time, Rachel befriends some
local teens and becomes more than a spectator to an escalating conflict
between two pairs of adolescent boys. Friends Scott Cardinal and Michael
Bell form half of the quarrelling quartet with Cory Sparks and Taylor
Sparshatt being the antagonists.

Rachel quickly establishes a romantic relationship with Michael, but at
times she cannot understand his moods. A local, Anna Klaus, explains
that Michael’s older brother and idol, Nick, was killed two years
earlier in a traffic accident following a high-school graduation party.
When Cory and Taylor accidentally destroy Nick’s go-cart that Michael
and Scott had been rebuilding, Michael retaliates by stealing Taylor’s
car and dumping it into a lake. Assuming the local police will pursue
him, a distraught Michael retreats to his childhood hideaway, a cave,
where he almost dies when the roof collapses. Looking back in November,
Rachel updates readers on what has since happened to Michael.

Holubitsky effectively recreates a small prairie community and
populates it with an appropriate cast of characters, including the local
bogeyman, Rib Bones Squire. A good read, Last Summer in Agatha lacks the
emotional wallop of Alone at Ninety Foot because Rachel can only report
Michael’s emotions rather than being able to share them firsthand with
readers. Recommended.