Winter, teenagers, and dreams of glory come together in this novel about the reaction of a small working-class town when the local hero decides not to join a professional hockey team. Talented Alexandre McKenzie lives on the North Shore of the St. Lawrence River, where in summer he rides the logging trails on his quad, and in winter?after school and hockey practice?he likes to head off alone to a bush camp outside town. When he meets and falls in love with an unusual girl, Jessie, who has been plagued by tragedy, his friends and neighbors criticize him for stepping outside the popular crowd. Fighting to hold his head high, Alex takes comfort in his love of nature and his sightings of a magnificent bull moose?and he knows that he does not want a future in sports.

Sylvain Hotte is an award winning writer of fiction for children and young adults. He was born in Montreal but has lived and worked in Quebec City of fifteen years. His first series Darhan was astoundingly successful. Power Forward is the second book in the Break Away series, after BREAK AWAY1, JESSIE ON MY MIND. His first 10 book series for young people Darhan tells of the adventures of a young warrior in Genghis Khan's empire. Sylvain Hotte won the Quebec City Creative Literature Award in 2010 for BREAK AWAY.

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"In this young adult novel about hockey, love and the wilderness, the translator (Casey Roberts) met the challenge of rendering the teenage narrator's lively and quirky voice in a faithful yet inventive idiom. Break Away, Jessie on My Mind is a re-creation that reads as smoothly as the original." —Literary Translators' Association