Off the Grid

Publisher Marketing: Sixteen-year-old Cody was born and raised "off the grid" deep in the wilderness by idealistic parents. When his father becomes seriously ill, the family is forced to move into the city so he can get treatment. Attending high school for the first time, Cody is an oddity and has a hard time adjusting. He finds unlikely allies in DeMarco, an inner-city kid, and Ernest, a philosophical homeless man, and he begins a tentative friendship with Alexis. When he comes to DeMarco's defense in an altercation at school, Cody finds himself in trouble with the police. A second confrontation puts Cody in more trouble with the cops, and he is convinced he must escape to the family homestead or be arrested. But Cody is torn between fleeing the city or staying with his ailing father and facing whatever consequences come his way. Contributor Bio:  Choyce, Lesley LESLEY CHOYCE is a novelist and poet living at Lawrencetown Beach in Nova Scotia. A former grand champion of the Men's Open Canadian National Surfing Championships, he surfs on the Atlantic coast year-round, along with running a literary publishing house and teaching English at Dalhousie University. He also has a regular nationally-broadcast program on Vision TV called "Off the Page with Lesley Choyce." He is the author of more than fifty books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction for adults and children, including "Carrie's Crowd" and "Go For It Carrie." His writing has earned him several awards, including two Dartmouth Book Awards and the Ann Connor Brimer Award for the Young Adult novel "Good Idea Gone Bad". Five of his previous Formac novels have received the Canadian Children's Book Centre's "Our Choice" Award. "The Ottawa Citizen" calls him "a national treasure."