Tom Slade was once the boy everyone warned about - reckless, trouble-making, a headache for every scoutmaster in town. But somewhere between his first campfire and this summer, that boy transformed. Now his peers have elected him assistant camp manager at Temple Camp, a role that demands everything he has learned. Yet even before arrival, Tom faces his first test: the other boys board the train while he chooses the hard way, paddling a canoe through wild rivers and hiking unfamiliar trails, believing the journey itself will forge the leader he needs to become. Accompanied by Roy Blakeley, who orchestrated his election, and Pee-wee Harris, whose comic relief masks genuine bravery, Tom encounters a gauntlet no scout manual could prepare them for - forest fires, raging floods, an escaped convict roaming the hills, and a mystery involving possible murder that brings them face to face with a ruthless lawyer. Each obstacle strips away another layer of the boy Tom used to be, revealing the steady young man beneath. Nearly a century old and still crackling with adventure, this is early twentieth-century boys' fiction at its purest - unapologetically optimistic, thrillingly dangerous, and built on the conviction that courage and friendship can conquer anything. For readers who believe the best stories are the ones that make them want to lace up their boots and hit the trail.
