Victoria Secord, a fourteen-year-old Alaskan dogsled racer, loses her way on a routine outing with her dogs. With food gone and temperatures dropping, her survival and that of her dogs and the mysterious boy she meets in the woods is entirely up to her. The author Terry Lynn Johnson is a musher herself, and her crackling writing puts readers at the reins as Victoria and Chris experience setbacks, mistakes, and small triumphs in their wilderness adventure. "A page-turner full of white-knuckle action. . . . Readers will be riveted until the end." — Publishers Weekly "[A] thoroughly engaging and incredibly suspenseful survival story. . . Well-crafted, moving and gripping." — Kirkus "Debut novelist Johnson links character to setting by showing how Vicky uses her knowledge of the land and copes with the elements, creates shelter, and snares animals in order to survive." — The Horn Book Magazine "The high-stakes adventure and episodic nature of the chapters will make this book an easy sell for reluctant readers." — School Library Journal Terry Lynn Johnson, author of Ice Dogs, Sled Dog School , Dog Driven  and the Survivor Diaries series, lives in Whitefish Falls, Ontario where for ten years she owned a team of eighteen Alaskan Huskies. www.terrylynnjohnson.com Twitter:@TerryLynnJ 1 SATURDAY All eight of  my  dogs  are  stretched  in  front of me in pairs along the gangline. They claw the ground in frustration as the loudspeaker blares.    “Here’s team number five. Our hometown girl, fourteen-year-old Victoria Secord!”    A male voice booms out my racing stats while my lead dog, Bean, whips his crooked rat tail. He tries to lunge forward, and then catches my eye and screams with a pitch that shoots up my spinal cord and electrifies my teeth.    “Easy!” I grip the sled with shaking hands. I freaking hate starts.    With close to a hundred dogs here, the energy in the air is frantic. The bawling of the dogs in the team behind me echoes in my ears while the distinct odor of dog doo smeared under my runners assaults my nose. I try to focus on my dogs and the race chute ahead. Not the burning need to win. Not the fact that there’s no one here to cheer for me.    “We gotcha.” Two burly guys kneeling on  the start line struggle to hold my bucking sled stanchions.    “Three, two, one, GO!”    We leap forward and shoot through Wicker’s parking lot.The main race sponsor insisted we start at his feed store, even though it’s three blocks away from the trailhead.They trucked in snow to get us through the streets, but as we skid through the dirty slush, I can tell this is a bad idea. Mushers need a real snow base for any kind of control.    My frozen eyelashes stick together, and I swipe at them as I peer ahead.We fly to the first corner, my heart pounding.    “Haw!” I shout.    My leaders swerve left, and the dogsled skids sideways. We’re gaining momentum. With the wind cutting into my face, it feels as if I’m being sling-shot out of a jet.    A red Chevette is the last in a line of parked vehicles along the other side of the road. I crouch lower, stick my left foot out, and dig the heel of my mukluk in to carve a tighter turn.    The sled continues skidding—closer, closer.    I jump on the brake, smashing the two metal points into the ground with every ounce of my five- foot-nothing frame. Still we skid.And then we careen into the door, my teeth rattling with the impact. A metal screech announces the collision to everyone. I hear a grinding pop.    We clear the car, and I look down to see a little extra weight in the sled bag—a side mirror. Glancing around to see if anyone noticed, I grab it and nonchalantly toss it away.The cold wind whistles through me when I grin.    I turn my attention back to my dogs. My leaders, Bean and Blue, dig for the trailhead with matching strides. Blue’s classic husky coat, with his black and white facemask, is even more striking next to Bean’s rusty-propane-tank shade of fur.    We hurtle down the middle of the street that’s been blocked off for the race. Now that they’re running, my dogs are all business, focused ahead with tight tuglines. My heart squeezes with pride. They don’t glance up as they barrel past a crouched photographer with a telephoto lens.They even ignore the smell coming from the hot dog stand next to the coffee shop.We catapult past a truck with its doors open blasting country music, past the historic log building that is the trading post with the two moose over the door. Someone had found the two sets of antlers locked together and the scene of how the animals died is forever replicated.When I was young, I could hardly stand to look at it, imagining what the moose had to endure, stuck together in battle, helpless and starving to death in the bush.    Finally we’re past Main Street, and we slip by the snow fencing that funnels us toward the trail.    I feel an instant calm.    The din of the crowd fades behind us. It’s just me and t