Old Man — David A. Poulsen

A trip with his estranged father changes Nate forever.

Commended for the Popular Paperback Young Adults Pick, 2014 and short-listed for the Forest of Reading - White Pine Award for Fiction, 2014

Just as summer vacation is about to arrive, Nate Huffman's plans are unexpectedly shelved for the most unlikely of reasons: the reappearance of his estranged father. Not only is the old man back, he's got this goofy idea about a road trip the two of them will take.

Nate finds himself in a pickup with a man he can't stand. His father wants to reconnect, and he wants Nate to really understand him. Larry Huffman has chosen to make this happen by taking his son into his own past, which has the Vietnam War as its centrepiece.

As the two struggle their way through the jungle of the Ashau Valley, the old man relives the horror of the battle that changed him forever, and Nate undergoes changes of his own â€" and they experience something that goes far beyond what either of them expected.