Lost Cause

"The dialogue is witty and sharp…The Spanish setting oozes charm, beauty and history. Readers will feel as if they are scootering with Steve and Laia along narrow roads and through timeless tiny villages steeped in the memory of a bloody civil war."―Resource Links

Steve thinks a trip to Europe is out of the question this summer―until he attends his grandfather David's will reading and is given an envelope containing an old key, an address, a plane ticket to Barcelona and a request to solve the mystery of what his grandfather was doing in Spain seventy-five years before. At the address, Steve meets a girl named Laia whose family seems to have some connection with Steve's grandfather. Together they find an old suitcase containing a diary that David kept when he fought with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Steve and Laia decide to retrace the young soldier's footsteps and, as they do so, read the diary. A they move towards the conclusion of their journey, they begin to understand what drove the young David to go and fight in a doomed cause, how his experiences there haunted him for the rest of his life and what he had to leave behind to escape.

"The descriptions of the war―and the emotional reactions of Steve and his grandfather at two different points in history―are rich and poignant…Some of the most compelling parts are the grandfather's journal entries which give amazing insights into the strategy and struggle of war. These, paired with the stories of the current day Spanish people, paint a complete picture of the war and its enduring effects…Highly Recommended."―CM Magazine

"Posthumous messages and tantalizing clues send a teenager from Canada to Barcelona in search of a hidden chapter from his beloved grandfather's past. Steve slowly gains insight into how it felt to believe passionately in a cause—even, in this case, a doomed one—and then to lose that innocent certainty in the blood and shock of war." ― Kirkus Reviews

"I had to force myself to take a break for food or sleep once in a while." ― YALSA YA Galley Teen Review