Tent City: No Malingering in These Hills

An Author Requested Review

Title: Tent City

Author(s): Kelly Van Hull

Publisher: Kelly Van Hull
Copyright: 2013
ISBN-10: 1482754533
ISBN-13: 978-1482754537
Format: ebook, paperback (340 pages)
Genre: Young Adult, Speculative Fiction
Part of Series: Yes
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Not Quite a Dream Come True

 Who hasn’t wanted to run away from home? Like most teenagers, I dreamed about freedom from parental rules and taking charge of my own life. However, none of those dreams included my parents telling me to run away or insisting I take my younger siblings with me. That would have turned the dream into a nightmare! Yet that is exactly what happens to 17-year-old Dani and her 5-year-old brother, Brody, in Kelly Van Hull’s novel, Tent City.  This young adult fiction weaves a story realistic enough to be believable with a dystopian future. The story, in first person point of view, tells how  the Army, renamed the Council, under the leadership of General Burke controls all resources to “protect” citizens from starvation after locusts destroyed most of the crops. And now they want to “protect” children between the ages of five and eighteen.

Van Hull captures our sympathy immediately with the opening line, “It feels a lot like the night my brother Drake died.” In one line Van Hull ties creates reader empathy as well a scene tension as Dani’s parents sit her at the kitchen table and tell her she needs to run away with her little brother. Uncle Randy, who’s “high up” in the Army, has warned them that the Council “fears if too many more deaths occur, the human population may be in danger of extinction.” The answer, of course, is to put the children in safety camps where procreation may be assured. Van Hull shows us lingering uncertainties through Dani’s statement, “The year they took over is when most people died. Doesn’t that seem weird to you?” Hesitant to take on the sole responsibility of her brother, she’s given a choice between hiding in the cellar and running off to hide in the Black Hills. Dani chooses the latter. But she isn’t some self-assured, arrogant teenager. She questions her ability to take care of Brody on her own and insists that her best friend, Kit, comes with them.

The Ride of a Lifetime

This fast-paced ride begins as Dani, Brody and Kit head for Black Hills on the family’s four-wheelers. As they follow a map Dani’s father marked to their cabin and Kit proves her value by being the only one who can actually read it. The plot is riveting, regardless of your age, as we follow the trio deep into the woods. Dani gets her four-wheeler stuck in the river and the group is rescued by a mysterious travelling teenager named Jack. While Kit is flirtatious, Dani is cautious and sends him on his way post-haste.  Dani and Kit create an interesting dichotomy of characters. Kit’s practical skills are coupled with playfulness and Dani’s guardedness is combined with curiosity. These contradictory skills come in handy when the trio reaches their destination, only to find the cabin already occupied and surrounded by a small city of tents.

Tent City is of full of dichotomies. There’s Bentley, the hard-nosed community leader and the previously mentioned, mild-mannered Jack. They obviously know each other and don’t like each other, but denied this to Dani. Jack and Bentley are as opposite as Kit and Dani. Where Bentley is a harsh, Jack is compassionate; where Jack focuses on helping others with his healing skills, Bentley focuses on fighting and conducting raids for supplies. They are an irresistible puzzle to Dani, who must find out the secrets which seem to surround them both.

Kelly Van Hull crafts a compelling story filled with puzzles and opposites. Who are Jack and Bentley and how do they know one another? How can they both have such exceptional yet opposite skills? What does the “spiritual awakening” after the locusts have to do with the Council’s control? How can Dani protect Brody when she feels barely about to take care of herself? Will Dani, Brody and Kit ever be able to bet back home? The ride is worthwhile, so read Tent City and learn, as Dani does, that answers sometimes yield more questions.