Robin is kidnapped by dangerous poachers while trying to save leatherback turtles in Central America. Robin Green is carrying on her work rescuing vulnerable animals at The Wild Place Animal Shelter when she and Zo-Zo get an amazing chance to help protect sea turtles in Central America. Worried about the bugs, the heat, and the threat of poachers, Robin faces her fears and travels there with Zo-Zo, her brother, Squirm, and her eccentric grandmother, Griff. It only takes one scorpion sting before Robin wants to go home, but the unbelievable sight of a leatherback turtle laying eggs on the beach changes her mind. Just when the group starts making progress, the poachers strike back. Suddenly, the turtles aren’t the only ones who need rescuing! Can Robin and Zo-Zo find a way out?
Can a high-seas, whale-saving adventure repair the hurt between two friends? How do you decide where your heart lies when it’s being tugged at from so many sides? When Robin and Zo-Zo discover that their beloved lake has become a toxic sludge – the result of an algae bloom – they know they have to do something to fix it. But trouble begins when the two friends develop a crush on the same boy during a community meeting to save the lake. To help repair things between the girls, Robin’s grandmother, Griff, suggests a high-seas adventure with a whale-saving old friend of hers. Out on the open water Robin must decide what’s more important: a relationship with a boy or saving the animals she loves.
Is Robin brave enough to do what’s right when everyone thinks she’s wrong? No one is more passionate about rescuing hurt animals than Robin, except maybe her best friend Zo-Zo, who helps Robin run the family’s animal shelter, The Wild Place. When the two of them discover that a neighbour’s chicken farm is really a factory farm, they both want to stop it. Zo-Zo argues that radical action is required, but Robin is worried about getting into trouble with her dad, or even worse, the local sheriff. Is it ever okay to break the law to stand up for what you believe in? And if it is, how will she find the courage to do what’s right, even when others think she’s wrong?
In Karen Hood-Caddy’s third inspiring novel featuring environmentalist heroine Jessie Dearborn, Jessie is concerned about the health of the water in her northern town. Harley, Jessie’s Ojibway partner, declares he wants to move further north to where the real wilderness is. She is torn between her allegiance to Harley and her devotion to the land. The Guerrilla Grannies, a group of feisty seniors, start a door-to-door campaign to raise environmental awareness. Trouble erupts when Jessie and Elfy, one of the more cantankerous seniors, get into a scrap with a local hockey hero and end up getting arrested. But this is also the story of Dan Goreman, whose life is in disarray from a bitter divorce. He decides to to accept a job his father has arranged for him at a water-treatment plant near Jessie’s home town. Dan falls in love with Meagan, whose family owns a resort in the area. Dan becomes very attached to Meagan’s six year-old son, but she is concerned about Dan’s unresolved past and asks him to see a therapist. Begrudgingly, Dan agrees and meets Jessie, who challenges him to be more truthful about his past. When the resort’s sewage lagoons burst and some of the waste gets into the town’s water, Dan makes a fatal mistake that could kill someone that he loves. Now Jessie has many more problems to solve in her quest to save Elfy from a jail term, help protect the lands and lakes which she loves and begin to understand the patterns in her own life.
The sequel to Tree Fever is a story of redemption and the power of belief. Tree Fever, Hood-Caddy’s first novel, introduced strong, spiritual heroine Jessie Dearborn, who struggled to save an old growth stand from a ruthless developer in her small Muskoka town and found her life’s meaning in the process. Flying Lessons once again finds Jessie and her small group of friends fighting those who would despoil the beauty of nature, this time the builders of a resort which will destroy the ecosystem of the lake on which she lives. Jesse must wage an exhausting uphill battle against the callousness of those who would exploit the natural world for their own gain. At the same time, Jessie finds herself unexpectedly saddled with a friend’s home-based bird sanctuary, where she cares for an injured baby loon who inspires her with its will to live. But Flying Lessons is really the story of two different women as Alex, a hard-driven investment lawyer from the city, faces her own mortality and seeks a healing sanctuary at Jessie’s home, where she learns to listen to her inner self again. This is another uplifting tale of personal growth and idealism by a writer with a compassionate, distinctive vision of the world.
After saving her dog, Robin begins rescuing wild animals and she’s soon running an illegal animal shelter. Short-listed for the 2012 CLA Book of the Year for Children Award and for the 2012 IODE Violet Downey Book Award Twelve-year-old Robin will never get over her mother’s death. Nor will she forgive her father for moving the family to a small town to live with a weird grandmother. At her new school Robin is laughingly called «Green Girl» and is taunted relentlessly because of an award she received. She decides not to care about anyone or anything. But when her pregnant dog plunges into the frozen lake, she saves the dog and hence the puppies. Robin finds she can’t stop herself from caring. She begins rescuing wild animals and rehabilitates them in the barn. Robin’s father forbids her to take in more, but she rescues some skunks, anyway, and hides them. Other animals arrive, and soon she’s running an illegal animal shelter. When she’s found out, Robin mounts a campaign to save her shelter. Will she have the courage to stand against the whole town?
The life of fiftyish Jessie Dearborn takes an unexpected turn when a ruthless developer threatens to cut down century-old trees in her small northern town in order to build a condominium. Surprising even herself, she steps in front of a chainsaw to defend the trees she loves. As the fight to save the trees intensifies, a group of gutsy, quick-witted older women joins the battle and explodes the issue into the newsmedia. At this turning point in her life, a native man helps Jessie by teaching her to trust her own instincts. Passion erupts between them and Jessie discovers a middle-aged sexuality as hot as the midday sun. Like a Group of Seven painting, Tree Fever is a love affair with nature, its wisdom, raw colours and elemental beauty.