PLATTSBURGH — New York times bestselling and award-winning author Kate Messner’s novel-in-verse,” The Trouble with Heroes” drops April 29.
Signed copies will be in stock on release day at Bookstore Plus in Lake Placid.
“It’s a book about a kid named Finn Connelly,” Messner said.
“He’s just about to fail 7th grade when he gets caught vandalizing a cemetery. The headstone he kicked over belonged to one of the first women to hike all 46 Adirondack High Peaks. When Finn gets caught on camera and hauled into court, her daughter makes Finn an offer. She said she’ll drop all the charges if he can climb all 46 mountains in a single summer. and also he has to bring her mother’s drooly Burmese mountain dog Seymour along on every climb.
“So essentially this is the story of a surly 7th grader who finds himself sentenced to climb 46 mountains with a dog he doesn’t like, at least not at first.”
DIRT TIME
A 46er since September 2023, Messner drew inspiration from her experiences climbing the High Peaks and those of others discovered during research.
“I didn’t climb them in a single summer,” she said.
“It took me eight years and coincidentally that’s also how long it took me to write this book. I first started climbing the High Peaks in 2015 and brought along my writer’s notebook. I bring it everywhere. I was finding I was drawn to write poems along the way, which isn’t terribly unusual for me. I’ve written poetry all my life. Sometimes, I’ll scribble a poem during a snack break, sometimes on a summit. I didn’t know then that some of those poems would end up being part of a novel in verse.”
But somewhere along the way on these hikes, Messner opened her notebook and a poem came out in a voice that was not hers.
“It was a voice that was younger, snarkier,” she said.
“It was angry, but the kind of anger that comes from a well of sadness. That’s when I started playing around with the idea of a novel about a kid who is forced to climb the 46 Adirondack High Peaks.”
Over the next several years, Messner’s Finn’s voice emerged as well as his backstory. She finished writing the book in September 2023, a couple of weeks after she summitted her 46th High Peak.
ANATOMY OF FINN
A former Plattsburgh Middle School teacher, Messner was familiar with tween angst.
“Honestly, some of my favorite kids were the kids who came into the room for English class with a chip on their shoulder,” she said.
“Just because you could see that there was something underneath that. I always wanted to be the teacher who cared about what was underneath. So Finn is very much inspired by some of the kids I taught just in terms of his overall attitude, and his snark. Just the sweet soul that exists underneath that anger and snark.”
Finn always lived in the shadow of his father, a Lake Placid hockey star, who grew up to be a New York City firefighter and immortalized in a viral 9/11 photograph of him rescuing a woman from the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
“Finn’s dad died during the COVID-19 Pandemic, and like so many of us in real life, he wasn’t able to grieve in all of the usual ways,” she said.
“So he’s been carrying around all of that sadness and anger. and all that blows up just before the book’s opening pages when Finn vandalizes that cemetery.”
FACT AND FICTION
Finn vandalized the gravestone of Edna Grace Thomas, a character Messner loosely based on Grace Hudowalski.
“A longtime 46er, and the first woman to record climbing all 46 High Peaks,” she said.
“Like Grace, Edna was a 46er corresponding secretary. Back in the day, if you wanted to be a 46er, you had to write her a letter after every hike. She would record your climb on the official document and write back to you. When I was climbing the 46 High Peaks, I started climbing them solo. Then I met a hiking partner, another local woman, who had climbed a couple of the High Peaks on her own. We decided we would hike the rest together.”
Some of the peaks are pretty remote. Her hiking buddy, Marsha Trombly, told Messner about the letters her father wrote to Grace and received from her when he was climbing the High Peaks decades ago.
“He was kind enough to loan me the scrapbook where he saved every letter,” she said.
“It was absolutely amazing. I loved reading all those letters from Grace, and they were very much the inspiration for some of the letters that appear in ‘The Trouble with Heroes.’”
COOL DROOL
Seymour, Finn’s furry hiking buddy, was inspired by a lot of canines Messner met on trails.
“I’m that hiker who always stops and asks can she pet your dog. It was a little bit difficult to decide what breed he should be. During the pandemic I was out hiking, and I met a family hiking with their Burmese mountain dog. I was like, ‘Oh, you’re Seymour,’” she said.
‘TRAIL NANNIES’
Messner didn’t want Finn to be all alone out there in the Adirondack wilds.
“It’s always important to me in everything that I write that one of the messages kids take away is you’re never alone. You’re not really alone even when it feels that way. I gave Finn these unlikely mentors. He complains about them when he learns he’s going to be hiking the High Peaks with experienced 46ers. He calls them ‘Trail Nannies.’ He’s just really annoyed with them,” she said.
Finn dubs the owner of a moo-moo farm ‘Cow Nanny.”
“She really has an appreciation for nature,” Messner said.
“She notices everything on the trail, very much like my hiking partner, Marsha. She sees every little toad and every butterfly and points them out to Finn. and at first, he’s just so irritated. ‘Blah, blah, butterfly. Shut up lady.’ But of course, he then starts to notice things, too. I think that’s one of the gifts of being outdoors is that you notice little things. When you’re hiking, you notice that tiny, little toad on the trail or that fern that looks like its hair for a big boulder. So Finn comes around to that.”
Another Trail Nanny is a rock climber and guidance counselor named Sam.
Coach is an older guy.
“When Finn first sees him at the trailhead, he doesn’t think he’s the Trail Nanny because he thinks the guy couldn’t hike to port a-potty much less climb a mountain. He’s a retired high school hockey coach, who it turns out was Finn’s dad’s coach back in the day. So he has some stories to share along with the usual kind of mentoring,” she said.
Coach is not a very talkative.
“Finn really appreciates that at first because he just wants to get his hikes done,” she said.
“He doesn’t want to make friends with anybody, but eventually he really develops a connection with this older gentleman.”