A Review of Mindy Mejia’s “Leave No Trace”
The Not-So-Great Outdoors
I grew up outside of Algonquin Provincial Park in central Ontario, and I like to joke that the small town in which I lived was located right next door to the middle of nowhere. It’s kind of true: Algonquin is a vast, sprawling, untamed wilderness that goes on for miles and miles. Seeing as though I grew up near there, you may be surprised to learn that I didn’t take too much advantage of it in my youth. I wasn’t really much of an outdoors nut, and was more the city slicker that I now am. But, on occasion, my father and I (and maybe another relative) would go there for a weekend camping trip where I learned to canoe and learned to fail at catching a fish. Well, nature lovers, I have a book for you, maybe: Mindy Mejia’s Leave No Trace, which is set in the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota, and which is, for all intents and purposes, the middle of nowhere.
The book concerns a young man named Lucas Blackthorn, who disappeared with his father 10 years ago into the Boundary Waters and hasn’t been seen since — until he shows up one night trying to break into a camping outfitter’s store in a nearby small town, which results in a woman getting killed. Lucas is sent to a psychiatric institution, which he repeatedly tries to break out of because he wants to be reunited with his ailing father. There, however, he meets a speech therapist named Maya Stark — who was a previous resident at the facility in a past life — who wants to help him. To say very much more would be tip-toeing into spoiler territory.
The thing is, I’m going to have to talk about some things in this ridiculous book — so feel free to look at other online reviews if you don’t want to be spoiled — because they really drag the book down. Maya gets romantically attached to Lucas, so, naturally, this leads to the author basically painting herself into a corner and leads to an unbelievable escape sequence from the facility. However, there’s a lot more that’s wrong with this book. For one thing, the author seems to have never set foot in a psychiatric facility (so she presumably doesn’t know that any kind of escape is more or less impossible). The other thing is that Lucas claims to have known Maya as a young boy, despite the fact that the two, as it turns out, never have met. It’s just this kind of implausibility and an abundance of plot holes (or shoddy plot devices) that sink the book down, like a dead weight tied to the edge of a canoe.
The thing that really gets me about this book is that Lucas tries to escape many times. The result is that the authorities keep giving him a short leash so that they can get him out of the system and fulfil his wish of reuniting with his father — to which ends Lucas uses to attempt yet another escape. It’s like a snake eating its own tail. Only after the romantic attachment is discovered, then do the authorities really start to clamp down — which is a little too late. Again, it’s as though the author doesn’t realize how psychiatrists really work. Nobody in their right mind would allow someone to escape and sully their reputation, which is what makes assigning Maya to the case all the more baffling in a way in the first place. After all, she is a former patient, and is prone to have sympathy for her subject. (And what institution in their right mind lets a former patient come back and work there as an employee?)
The other thing that doesn’t make sense about this book is that Lucas has protesters outside the gates of the facility, begging those in charge to set him free as he’s done nothing wrong. (Well, aside from an attempted break and enter that has resulted in a death.) This doesn’t feel realistic. True, Lucas may be a media sensation for being out of the public eye for a decade, but I’m willing to think that most people in the public just wouldn’t care about him. Think of it, when was the last time someone picketed a mental institution begging a patient’s release? I can’t think of any instances of this.
Despite these flaws, the book is somewhat readable. Still, I keep coming back to the faults. For instance, I felt that the relationship between Maya and her father does go nowhere, which is odd for a novel about the bonds between parents and their children, but he’s a likable enough character that we don’t get to see often enough. In the end, the book is a fairly predictable potboiler that is readable because it’s just so ludicrous. This is a bit of a spoiler, so mind me here: When we find out what Lucas’ relationship is with Maya’s mother — who has disappeared — Maya’s reaction is to help find Lucas’ father so she can avenge her death. (And, yes, the word avenge is in the book.) Has the author been watching too many superhero movies?
All in all, Leave No Trace is a book with many faults. It’s only enjoyable in a “park your brain at the door” kind of way. There’s really not a lot of substance here, and there are so many implausible things that happen in this novel that the average reader will just be rolling their eyes in frustration. We want to like Maya, as we want to like Lucas, but they seem like cardboard cut-outs most of the time. And Maya, as it turns out, turns into a bit of a criminal by novel’s end, which rubs against the professional standing she has in the psychiatric community. Who in their right mind would risk their career to abet and help a patient in ways that go against the rules, and why didn’t anyone who works at the facility see this coming a mile away — because that’s how it’s telegraphed as? Basically, Leave No Trace is a book best left in the middle of nowhere. Read it only if you have nothing else to do, because, well, it’s that kind of book. A book for the fishing trip when you’re forgotten to pack something else, really. Nothing more or less.
Mindy Mejia’s Leave No Trace was published by Simon & Schuster Canada on September 4, 2018.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
