Occasionally I will read a recommended children's book, both because I relish a simply told story and because I may have had enough of deep and thought-provoking literature with complex and conflicted characters.  I want to read  a well-told yarn --- exciting, colorful, and inspiring --- without having to dash through sex scenes and gratuitous obscenity.  (Yes, there are books still worth reading even though they may have both.)  Leepike Ridge, N.D. Wilson's first novel for the youth market, manages to avoid the sex and obscenity in an adventure involving lost caves, treasure, murder, and family, and teaching us about loyalty, courage, perseverance, and greed.  It's a great story for most pre-teen boys, or even girls, and at 49 I must still have enough yearning for adventure that I enjoyed it as well.

Thomas Hammond lives with his mother in a house on a ridge by a stream, his house chained to the rock for some inexplicable reason.  Tom is still suffering the loss of his father in an apparent airplane crash, and though his mother Elizabeth is good to him she is lately being wooed by Jeffrey Veatch, whose last name (which rhymes with leech) is some indication of his nature.  When it becomes clear that Veatch is intent on marrying his mother, Tom runs away, unintentionally losing himself in the caves lying under the ridge, caves rumored to have hidden treasure. 

And that's where the real adventure begins.  Enter the greedy treasure seekers, a dog named Argus, a flashlight, and other cave-dwellers, dead and alive.  In the course of trying to get home Tom deals with his fears, learns to survive, and exercises hope --- learning a great deal about himself in the process.

Wilson, who teaches classical rhetoric to freshmen at New Saint Andrews College, writes adeptly, conveying lessons about virtue and vice without any moralizing.  Rather, he focuses on telling a good story --- one just fantastic enough to be fun.  He's obviously lived in the worlds of Robinson Crusoe, Tom Sawyer, and King Solomon's Mines enough to spin his story out of the same fiber.  And perhaps he's listened well to his own four children, as all children can tell a good story from a bad one.

Have some fun.  Read this story.  Share it with your children.  There's a bit of blood, a dead body, and some bad characters (portrayed as such), but older children will appreciate an exciting story and learn something in the process.