Author: Andrew Klavan
Recommended Age: 15+
Date Published: 2012
Genre: Contemporary, Adventure
Summary: What was supposed to be a simple missions trip turns into a harrowing escape attempt when rebels take over the Central American country of Costa Verde with no concern for the lives of its people. And for Will Peterson and his other teenage friends on the missions trip, their simple goal of getting community service hours has turned into a literal adventure of life and death.
Notes from The Radical Reader:
- Noble Characters: Told through the eyes of sixteen-year-old Will Peterson, he and three friends journey to a Central American country to help a school build a wall. But on the day they plan to leave, the revolution in Costa Verde begins and they are stranded. From chatty Nicole with her perfect hair-do, to pragmatic James who believes that reason will defy all actions, to Meredith whose courage seems to bind them together, the refugees are forced to turn to a hardened pilot and ex-Marine who may be their key to escaping alive.
- Captivating Plots: Their only hope lies in a veteran warrior whose loyalties are uncertain, yet who may be able to guide them alive to the border. With killers hunting them, armies determined to stop their escape, and a jungle teeming with danger, their only hope is to reach home before they are completely trapped.
- Elaborate Worlds: Set in the Central American country of Costa Verde, If We Survive takes readers through jungles, prisons, and gunfire to challenge their misconceptions of courage and asks them what fearlessness truly means.
Noteworthy Elements:
- Violence: Angry at a guard for striking one of the girls, Will wonders “how [the guard] would look with a bullet hole in the center of his forehead”. Will shoots one of the rebels when they are attacked and describes it as “I could see his shirt ripple and see the black spots where the bullets hit”. A woman’s baby in the village dies and she begs the missionaries to make it come back to life. While spending the night in ancient temple ruins, Will wonders if humans were sacrificed in the temple and realizes it gives him a “spooky feeling, as if the ghosts of all those sacrificed people might still be floating around the graveyard stones”.
- Sexual Tension: Though nothing explicit is written, rebel guards jeer at and mock the girls. Meredith tells one of the rebels “you can have whatever… friendship you want from me” if he’ll let her friends escape. One of the rebels studies Meredith and Nicki and is described as “his eyes going up and down them slowly, his lips curled into a smirk”.
- Profanity: The word “gee” is used once. The phrase “it can go hang” is used once. One of the girls, Nicki, swears at a guard but no words are written.
- Other: While hiding out in the catacombs, Will dreams that skeletons come alive. Will tells the reader that he likes playing video games “especially the ones that make my mom cringe because of all the blood”.
