Books and the people who create them are among the many things for which I am thankful. Like everyone, I have my favorites and, every once in a while, I add one to that list. The Trouble With Heroes by Kate Messner is the latest. This new novel in verse blew me so far away I’m still reeling.
Thirteen-year-old Finn Connelly vandalizes a gravestone and has to make reparations by climbing 46 mountains over the summer. Also, in order to pass 7th grade he has to make up 14 hours for gym class and complete a language arts “stupid” poetry project to “draft, revise, and edit a collection of at least 20 poems about people you consider to be heroes.”
But Messner gives us so much more than this. Finn’s story is complex and deep. His raw, pitch-perfect voice pulled me right into his story, into him. Confused, angry and broken, Finn must find his way through grief for his hero father who died two years before. Finn is real, honest, vulnerable and desperate for understanding, desperate to understand. You can’t help but love him and, in loving him, you want, need, him to be okay, to find his way.
The book is rich with supporting characters, too, each who subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, play a part in Finn’s healing and redemption. Messner even manages to make characters who are dead come alive for us and for Finn.
The Trouble with Heroes is about climbing mountains, finding nature, creating and living poetry. It’s about making bad choices, forgiveness, loss and healing. It’s about heroes, cookie recipes, and a drooling dog named Seymour (who’s also lovable). It’s about learning to love life after pain.
Messner can make you laugh out loud with one sentence and break your heart with the next. She’d choke me up and make me want to look away to compose myself, but the book is so compelling, it was impossible to stay away for long.
Heroes is an emotional read but—packed with metaphor —it also makes you think. Here are just a few examples:
“Sometimes people don’t know why
they’re climbing.
They only know it’s better than hurting
standing still”
“Sometimes when you climb mountains
there are mountains in the way
and you have to climb those mountains
before you get to the mountain
you were trying to climb in the first place.”
“Some things are just tough
and there’s no way around
the hard parts.
Sometimes there’s no good path—
just a bad way or a worse way—
so you might as well choose one
and get started.”
I’ve already read this masterpiece twice. And I know I’ll want to read it again and again. It touched me in so many ways. Thank you, Kate Messner, for giving us Finn, for making him someone who will stay in my heart always.