"Burrows employs a witty narrative voice and a unique setting that informs readers about the 1830s frontier and the world of avid historical reenactors...An often clever and tightly paced YA romp." — Kirkus Reviews

Finalist, 2021 Book Buyers Best Contest, Young Adult Category

Fifteen-year-old Manhattan teen Chloe Crandall is spending her summer in retro hell.

Her history professor parents drag her along to a living history campground in North Dakota so they can relive the Era of the Fur Trader and the Mountain Man—even though Chloe doesn't wear fur and doesn't date mountain men.

She is also disastrously inept at mastering frontier skills, and she flunks her ox-droving license test. An oversized, hatchet-wearing junior mountain man throwback wants her for his mountain mama, and rejecting him could be awkward since his sister, a girl blacksmith, is her one and only friend. All the other kids in the campground's Teen Activities Group dis and dismiss her as a gritless asphalt brat.

Chloe's an unhappy camper until she meets Zach, a hot boy in buckskins with a matching horse. It's crush at first sight for Chloe, and she's determined to prove to Zach and his friends that city girls do have grit. Chick grit.

But when a natural disaster strikes the campground, will Chloe's chick grit be enough to save a child's life—and her own?

81,000 words