Mary Woodbury’s latest novel for young adults offers a compelling mix of adventure, suspense, and psychological realism. The main plot centres around 12-year-old Jess and her elderly neighbour Ernie, the runaway grandpa of the book’s title. Ernie has been a surrogate grandfather to Jess throughout her childhood, but now he has Alzheimer’s disease and can seldom recognize her. Therefore, when Jess sees Ernie climb behind the wheel of his truck with fishing gear and camper in tow, she feels obliged to join him for his own safety, and the two end up far from home in the wilderness of northern Alberta.

Despite the marked differences between them, Jess and Ernie make good travelling companions. Both begin the journey in a transitional state: Jess is caught between childhood and adulthood, Ernie between adulthood and infantile dependency.They confront similar tangles of memory, loneliness, and the exigencies of daily survival, and both find at least a few of the answers they need in the course of their trip.

The depiction of Alzheimer’s in this novel is both realistic and empathetic. Since the narrative switches between the perspectives of various characters, the reader is privy to Ernie’s experience of his own degeneration and to the experiences of the people who care for him. Ernie’s ever-weakening hold on his past also provides a focus for some of the principal themes in the novel, which include coping with loss, revering memory and imagination, and protecting family life. The multiplicity of messages does make the novel didactic, but the continuous action and empathetic characterization tend to preclude a sanctimonious tone. (Two minor characters, a teenaged news reporter and a yuppie with a newfound social conscience, provide unfortunate exceptions to this rule.)

Woodbury’s prose style attests to her years of experience as a writer for young adults. The writing flows smoothly, the landscape descriptions are sharply evocative, and the dialogue is plausible, even if it seems a little sanitized. (Why don’t any of the characters curse in such fraught circumstances?) Nevertheless, Woodbury’s main characters are engaging, and their adventures should hold readers, young and old, in thrall.