High School kids in Salmon Falls are much the same as high school kids anywhere else: bored. In the far reaches of Ira County, Vermont, in the dead of winter, it seems there's nothing to do. But when eighteen-year-old Kyle Nelson and a handful of friends decide to challenge the status quo with an act of civil disobedience, they discover that there's more to do than they ever bargained for. Garret Keizer's gripping novel about young men and women desperate for change bears witness to the dangerous force of ideas and the searing power of friendship. Here is a novel that looks truth squarely in the eye, and dares to keep on looking. Grade 8&Up--From the sobering dedication, "For those I taught, the living and the dead," to the predictable but necessary car-crash plot, an interesting cast of teen and adult characters populates this story set in rural Vermont. High school senior Kyle feels average, but has friends who excel. "Quaker" Oats is smart and a committed pacifist. Beautiful Diana is their longtime best friend, Kyle's unrequited love, and a good person. David is a redneck, backwoods hunter given to rages that Kyle and his friends often try to assuage. Newcomer Condor is inexplicably nasty to David. For a class project, Quake and the gang create an unofficial nonviolent social protest they call the Beer Rebellion, or SUDS: Students Undermining a Drunk Society. They cite three goals: "Lower the drinking age, raise the drinker's awareness, and destroy the non-drinker's stigma." During a party, Condor gets drunk and sober Diana is killed while driving him home. David rages, emptying the coolers of beer at the mini-mart, smashing bottles in the parking lot until arrested. At his trial, Quake follows suit in the courtroom. Kyle watches them work through their subsequent community service, gains a better understanding of Condor, and wrestles with his own choices. The plot wanders around, leaving readers a little unsettled about what the kids are really trying to accomplish. However, the book does mirror their attempts to reconcile our society's conflicting and often hypocritical attitudes. This message in a bottle is a brave, if uneven, attempt to provoke thought about this difficult, oft-ignored matter. Joel Shoemaker, Southeast Junior High School, Iowa City, IA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Garret Keizer is the author of the critically acclaimed books The Enigma of Anger and A Dresser of Sycamore Trees . He is a frequent contributor to Harper's Magazine . He lives with his family in northeastern Vermont.