Friday, September 16, 2011

Boot Camp, by Todd Strasser



Garrett is kidnapped in the middle of the night, handcuffed, and driven for 8 hours to a remote camp for troubled teens, Lake Harmony. His parents are paying $4000.00 per month for the chance that boot camp will turn Garrett into the son they want him to be. His crime? Garrett fell in love with the wrong girl. No anger issues, no school issues, no maturity issues. But in boot camp he is subjected to brutal physical and psychological abuse, and with his parents behind it, there is no way out until he is 18. Then he's asked to join an escape with two others. The risk is enormous, but staying is dangerous too.

I'd like to think camps like Lake Harmony are fictional and the product of the author's imagination, but Todd Strasser has added a bibliography of the sources he used to research the subject, and that may be the most unsettling part of the book.

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