Getting Out: A Novel

When Hannah Blue joins the Adventurer's Club, she pictures campfires and star-filled nights. She imagines a temporary respite from the ever-present shadow of her parents' divorce, and her older brother and younger sister's seeming inability to cope in the real world without her vigilance. And most of all, she can draw away from her father, whose unpredictable moods and imaginary health scares have always placed him at the center of the family universe. It's also a chance to spend some time away from her boyfriend, Ben, who, it seems, is ready for a serious commitment—and maybe even to start a family of his own.

When her father's latest illness turns out to be real, Hannah finds herself growing addicted to the escape she finds in the silty caves deep beneath the sunlit woods, on the crevasses accessible only with crampons and ice axes. Some of her adventures are more dangerous than others, but everyone in the Club has always survived—or have they? Hannah feels it’s worth the risk, and soon it’s as if she feels more herself when she's outside—until she realizes that the people she keeps leaving may not always wait for her to come back.

Featuring an engaging, spirited heroine and vivid outdoor settings, Getting Out surpasses the stylistic and storytelling promise Gwendolen Gross displayed in her first novel, Field Guide.

“Even committed couch potatoes should enjoy the graceful blending of outdoor adventuring and wry immersion in family dynamics that distinguishes this engaging second novel by Gross. We're won over immediately by the catchy, knowing voices of its narrator, Hannah Blue ... And who can resist a heroine who says things like 'I can't remember my own birth, but I'm sure it was something like caving.'... It's a charmer.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“Because the story is told from Hannah's perspective, a novice adventurer, the technicalities of hiking and climbing are covered with simplicity and precision. Descriptions of the outdoors convey the sounds of the mud beneath Hannah's feet and the rhythm of her tent mates' breathing. [Gwendolen Gross] avoids platitudes and guidebook-style statements, and instead captures the wonder of a novice. Hannah's struggles with equipment, aching muscles, occasional fear and total awe are simple and very real . . . It's enticing enough to make a devoted urbanite understand the need to give up sidewalks in favor of trails.”— Boston Herald

“Gross has created an engaging heroine, Hannah Blue, and employed her trademark unpretentious wisdom and wry, insightful humor. Joining an Adventurer's Club, Hannah hopes for temporary respite from everyday pressures. When her father's latest illness turns out to be real, she finds herself addicted to the escape she discovers outside until she realizes that the people she keeps leaving may not always wait for her to come back.” — Oberlin Alumni Magazine

“...a fine, authentic adventure story that draws on an obviously intimate knowledge of nature and the outdoors... Gross' work is refreshingly different in an age when most writers, like most people, seem to have tunnel vision, focusing only on the artificial world of modern society. By getting out into the fiercely beautiful realities of nature, she enriches her fiction and offers an unusual perspective from which to consider human emotions.”
— Winston-Salem Journal

“Getting Out follows that old American tradition afforded by all this glorious empty land—an invigorating place to reinvent oneself, a tempting escape from domestic responsibility, a terrifying challenge to test one's mettle. But Gross has feminized this national myth in a way that reminds us that Huck Finn was just a boy and Rabbit Angstrom was just unbearable . . . A light summer novel in the best sense. Her voice shimmers with wit . . . Gross captures the erotic freshness of woods and avid outdoorsmen with perfect clarity . . . Gross dares to wander off the path and explore the dark underbrush of this temptation to abandon the ones we love, the ones who need us.”
— Christian Science Monitor

“Getting Out puts a new spin on the adventure story. . . Gross has captured much of the spirit of an over-stressed and self-critical generation. Without resorting to predictable characters, setting, or action, she presents a likable and strong female protagonist. Hannah is someone the reader can really cheer for.”
— Bookreporter.com

“...funny, touching, and exhilarating.”
— Publishers Weekly

“[A] winning novel from the author of Field Guide.”
— Booklist

“The adventure story is alive and well and not entirely monopolized by Jon Krakauer. This delightful novel is filled with both the outdoors and the interior life of Gwendolen Gross's likeable narrator, Hannah Blue. For those of us who prefer to stay at home and let others have adventures for us, Getting Out is a find.”
— Meg Wolitzer, author of The Wife: A Novel

“Witty, smart, and inspiring, Getting Out chronicles the adventures in love, family, and the great outdoors of its unique and engaging heroine, Hannah Blue.”
— Jenny McPhee, author of The Center of Things