The Big Wander

Written by Will Hobbs

Narrated by Ed Sala

The Big Wander is a trip 14-year-old Clay Lancaster and his older brother Mike have planned for years. It's Clay's dream to find his ex-rodeo star uncle, who quit the tour and disappeared somewhere in the vast and colorful Monument Valley. But Mike-heartbroken and unfocused after losing his girlfriend-soon heads for home. Clay, however, will not give up. He finds a job in a remote trading post, and follows a lead on his uncle's whereabouts that takes him deep into Navajo country. There he learns the ways of the tribe, the dangers of the wilderness, and discovers, just in time, the secret of his long lost uncle's fate. Best-selling young adult author Will Hobbs won an ALA Best Book Award for The Big Wander. Hobb's prose paired with Sala's perfect pacing and authentic accents will make you feel you are in the American Southwest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781464044441

Will Hobbs

Will Hobbs is the award-winning author of nineteen novels, including Far North, Crossing the Wire, and Take Me to the River. Never Say Die began with the author's eleven-day raft trip in 2003 down the Firth River on the north slope of Canada's Yukon Territory. Ever since, Will has been closely following what scientists and Native hunters are reporting about climate change in the Arctic. When the first grolar bear turned up in the Canadian Arctic, he began to imagine one in a story set on the Firth River. A graduate of Stanford University, Will lives with his wife, Jean, in Durango, Colorado.

Reviews for The Big Wander

[pussreboots · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Big Wander by Will Hobbs is a tween fiction about a fourteen year old boy doing his best to find his missing uncle. When the book opens, Clay and his older brother, Mike, leave Seattle for Arizona and New Mexico, in search for Uncle Clay.Mike and Clya are on their own during summer break while their mother is in South America, doing charity work. They have about $200 and an old truck to last them through the summer. Their only clue is a call from a place that sounds like "Restaurant Hay."The book has three distinct parts (with a small coda at the end): the brothers traveling together, Clay by himself, and Clay with a Navajo family. It's not until Clay is on his own that the book becomes something special.Clay, relying on a burro, a stray dog, and a later a pinto horse, gets into some of the most remote areas of the borderlands between Arizona, New Mexico and Utah (much but not all, within the Navajo Nation). His travels take him roughly from Monument Valley to present day Lake Powell — in the weeks before the valleys were flooded to create the lake.