Mud in My Heart

Melinda Keen
Lulu.com (2007)
ISBN 9781430304050
Reviewed by Erin Keith (17) for Reader Views (12/07)

“Mud in My Heart” is a story that beings in present times.  However, no setting is revealed until the story flashes back to when the main character, Adam Marks, was an eighth grader.  Adam is expelled from school two weeks before finishing eighth grade and is informed, by his father, that he will have to attend summer school.  Adam then begins to tell his story of the trip that he took with his father to the Philippines.  In the novel, Adam learns about a new culture and also more about himself and his relationship with his father.  Adam and his father have struggles that go back to when Adam's mother left three years previously.  Adam learns that his father is not the man he has come to be when he learns about his father's past and his previous trip to the Philippines fourteen years earlier.

While on a rafting trip, Adam is held by the hands of a crazy man bearing a knife at his throat.  Adam passes out and when he wakes, he realizes he has been kidnapped.  His escape plans are ruined when he tries to run away.  While he is living in this strange place, he finds a puppy that seems to want a lot of attention.  He names the young one Mud Puppy, because the puppy loves to roll in the mud.  After a short while, he makes an escape with Mud Puppy into the rain forest.  Adam realizes the dangers of the rain forest when he is caught in a mudslide.  He makes it out alive and Adam is able to find his father, maybe out of pure luck and good wits, and the only downfall is that he cannot take Mud Puppy back to America with him because animals can not come into the US from the Philippines without being quarantined for two months.

This is a great story and a fairly quick read.  It is a little sad, but it is also suspenseful and one of those novels that you don't want to put down until you are through.  I would suggest “Mud in My Heart” for ages 12 and up.

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