Jason M. Jones

A lonely, bullied boy, who worries his parents might be getting divorced, decides to head into the forest behind his home to retrieve a rare item he believes could save it—a black truffle—but when he finds himself lost, he ends up in a battle for his life against a wolf that has taken up residence there.

The Elusive Black Truffle logline

The Elusive Black Truffle is the first of two survival dramas for young adult readers that tells the tale of a twelve-year-old loner, Peter, bullied at school because he’s gay, searching for a truffle he believes will save his parents’ marriage. His only friend Chris joins him on his quest, but the search soon turns perilous as the boys find themselves lost in the woods. Little do they know that a sanctuary wolf has recently been released in their area, and they’re soon engaged in a struggle for survival as they cross paths with this dangerous animal.  

The Elusive Black Truffle Elevator Pitch

The target audience for The Elusive Black Truffle is teens who feel constrained by traditional notions of gender and are looking to explore alternatives. Beyond that, the book will appeal to a wider audience who are interested in stories of the natural world such as Jean Craighead George’s Julie of the Wolves as well as for fans of edgy survival tales like TV’s Yellowjackets.

Target audience for The Elusive Black Truffle

The Elusive Black Truffle fuses elements of Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet with Sara Pennypacker’s Pax in an epic that’s both grueling and heartwarming in equal measure.

Similar Books to The Elusive Black Truffle

Twelve-year-old Peter Bracaglia’s life has taken a sudden downturn. His formerly happy parents have stopped speaking to one another, and his foodie mother has lost her passion for all things culinary overnight. On top of this, a bully at school has targeted Peter with implications he might be gay—and Peter wonders if he could be right. Even if he can’t solve his problems at school, he thinks maybe he can do something about his parents. He believes that if he can find a rare cooking ingredient, a black truffle, in the woods behind his home, he can reignite his mother’s passion and possibly save his parents’ marriage. Peter sets off into the woods with his St. Bernard, Scratch, and his best friend, Chris. But what they don’t know is that a veterinarian at a local sanctuary has released back into the wild an aggressive wolf that had been scheduled for euthanasia. When Scratch dashes off in the forest, the boys end up lost. With night approaching and the cold coming on, the boys find themselves in a predicament: stay put and wait for their guardians to find them or attempt to discover the way home themselves. As their quest places them on a collision course with the wolf, the boys struggle with demons both inside themselves and in the world-at-large. Will Peter and Chris survive the night?

Full Synopsis

Twelve-year-old PETER BRACAGLIA’s life has taken a sudden downturn. For weeks, his parents, who’ve always seemed happy, haven’t been speaking, and whenever he comes home from school, his formerly-bustling house is quiet. Too quiet. His dad, JOSH, is an aspiring artist who spends his time out in a barn he’s converted into a studio, and his mother, SUSAN, an avowed foodie, spends most nights alone on the couch, watching her favorite cooking shows. Although Peter has trouble admitting it, he fears his parents might be heading for a divorce. To make matters worse, KYLE HARTFORD, a school bully who’s been looking to get back at Peter for standing up to him, finds a crack in Peter’s armor by implying that Peter might be gay. While Peter knows that if he lived in a more progressive area this wouldn’t be a big deal, his family lives in a small town that might not take kindly to him coming out. He has one friend, CHRIS HAWKINS, but because of Kyle’s accusation, Peter has pulled away from Chris, ducking him at school and avoiding Chris’s invitations to hang out. When the isolation becomes too much, Peter looks for ways to fix his problems, and one evening, he joins his mom to watch a travel/food show. The host is searching for a black truffle in a forest. Peter’s mother tells him that truffles are valuable and difficult to find and that humans need a trained pig to sniff them out. Peter doesn’t have a pig, but he does have a six-year-old St. Bernard named SCRATCH. Watching the show gives him an idea: if he and Scratch can locate a truffle in the forest behind his family’s home, perhaps he could reignite his mother’s passion for food and get his parents talking again. Thus, the following Friday, despite it being rainy, Peter heads into the woods to search.

Naturally, Chris is confused about why Peter has pulled away from him. So, on this same afternoon, Chris, who lives next door, watches his friend cross his backyard and disappear into the trees. He decides to follow at a distance to see what’s up. The boys often play in the woods, and Chris’s UNCLE DAVE, with whom he lives since his parents died in a car crash, has begun to teach them survival skills such as how to build a contained fire and how to navigate by compass. He’s also helped them build a tree fort, which is where Chris supposes Peter is headed. Yet, right at the moment he tracks Peter to the spot he’s chosen to dig, Scratch spots an animal and chases it into the woods. Peter chases Scratch and Chris follows Peter, and soon enough, the boys are lost. By this point, Peter has worked himself into a frenzy, and rather than sitting still and waiting for Peter’s parents to find them, Peter leads them deeper into the woods, assuring Chris that he knows the way home. As Scratch loses the boys and tires of the chase, he scents something different in the forest, something he’s never scented before, and he stumbles upon the carcass of a deer. When the scent of the animal that killed the deer becomes stronger, the dog recognizes that another animal, similar to him but more savage and vicious, has taken up residence in the woods.

As the boys venture deeper into the woods, they realize they face two problems on top of being lost. First, it will be dark soon, and though they know how to build a fire, the rain prevents them from doing so. Second, since Peter hadn’t expected to be out this long, he hasn’t dressed for the weather. He’s soaked through, and the temperature is plummeting. The boys argue about what they should do. Chris is upset because Peter seems to have lost all use of reason and is focused solely on finding his dog, but soon enough Peter has an idea. Chris’s Uncle Dave taught the boys how to set a bearing with a compass using a landmark. A stream runs past the area in the woods where their tree fort stands, and if Peter can climb a high enough tree and locate the stream, he believes that they can follow it back home. At first, Chris is skeptical, not only that Peter can pull it off, but that Peter should even be climbing a tree in the rain. Yet, Peter does it and finds the stream. Once he has, the boys follow it toward what they hope will be salvation, though they’re heading the wrong direction, into territory occupied by the animal Scratch has scented.

What neither the boys nor Scratch know is that this animal is a wolf. Three weeks before, a veterinarian at a wolf sanctuary to the north staged what looked to be an escape and kidnapped the wolf AGAMEMNON, releasing him into the wild. Agamemnon had been scheduled to be put down for fighting with other wolves, something the sanctuary couldn’t tolerate, and another home for him couldn’t be found. The reason the vet took this chance was that Agamemnon had never shown aggression toward the human workers there, and she hoped that, by releasing him, he could find his way to another pack in the wild. Unfortunately, Agamemnon, having been raised in captivity, has not fared well. He’s able to catch small game, but an encounter with an elk leaves him with broken ribs and a bruised forepaw. Only a week before the boys get lost, Agamemnon is fortunate enough to stumble upon a wounded deer, but he doesn’t understand that the wound was made by a gunshot. He begins to feed when a hunter stumbles upon him and shoots, and although the hunter doesn’t kill the wolf, Agamemnon sustains a shoulder injury that becomes infected. Alone and weary, Agamemnon spends his days seeking the borders of the sanctuary or a human who can take him there. With hunting becoming more difficult and hunger setting in, Agamemnon is desperate.

Having trudged through the underbrush that lines the banks of the stream for the past several hours, Peter is also desperate, cold, and tired. He’s shivering so badly that he’s worried if he stops, he won’t be able to get going again, yet he needs a break, for his legs are so heavy he can hardly take another step. The boys have come equipped with flashlights, but given the cloud cover, they can only see as far as the beams travel. Chris decides to venture off the path to look for a place where Peter can rest and discovers a burrow beneath a fallen tree where they can get out of the wind and build a fire. He collects kindling, but everything is wet, so Chris consults a survival handbook he’s brought and discovers that if he shaves off the wet bark, he might get his fire to light. Using a treasured combat knife Uncle Dave gifted him, he peels the bark away and manages to set a small blaze in the alcove, but it’s big enough that it warms his friend. The boys decide that now is the time to sit tight and wait for a search party to find them. Chris assumes that Uncle Dave must be looking, since he left a note and didn’t get back by the specified time.

As Peter warms up, he decides to come clean to Chris. He admits that he was out in the woods searching for a truffle because he’s worried his parents are heading for a divorce and he was hoping to stop it. He tells Chris that he knows it was a stupid idea, and the reason he didn’t fess up was because, with Chris’s parents dead, he was worried Chris wouldn’t care about such an insignificant thing as his parents divorcing. Chris tells Peter that his concerns aren’t dumb and that he cares deeply about his friend’s problems. He asks if this is the reason Peter pulled away from him, and Peter, in a moment of courage, tells Chris about Kyle Hartford’s insinuations. Chris asks if Kyle is right, and at first, Peter becomes defensive, but soon enough he lets his guard down. “I don’t know who I like,” Peter admits. “I’ve never really liked anyone in that way yet. Everyone else seems to have crushes. But I’ve never thought about anyone that way. I guess that scares me most. That I’m broken. If Kyle’s right, at least I’d like someone. But if I was, then that would just be another reason for everyone to think I’m a freak, right?” Hearing this, Chris reassures him that he likes Peter no matter what and that other people will too. He assures Peter the world is changing, even in small towns like theirs, and there’s a place for people like him in it.

With the fire dying down, Chris decides to leave the burrow to collect more kindling while Peter, feeling reinvigorated from the rest and warmth of the fire, investigates a strange smell emanating from the opposite end of their burrow. What he finds is the haunch of the deer that Agamemnon cached from his meal the week before. At the same time that Peter recognizes they’ve occupied a predator’s burrow, Chris ducks back in and lets Peter know he’s spotted a wolf on their perimeter, circling and watching them. As Agamemnon releases a howl into the night, they both get ready to run. Peter stashes his collapsible shovel in the back of his shirt, Chris tucks the combat knife into his belt, and they head for the water, assuming that if they dive in, the wolf won’t follow. When Peter hits the water, he’s paralyzed by the cold, and it takes a moment to get his arms and legs moving again. He surfaces and searches for Chris, only to find him floating face down in the current behind him. The current is strong, but Peter is a good swimmer. He intercepts Chris, pulls him to shore, and gets him breathing again, all the while worried about what they’ll do. With no shelter or fire and both of them soaking wet, they won’t survive the night unless they’re found.

As Chris comes to, Peter helps him to climb a tree to wait for help. He discovers, however, that the wolf has followed them. Peter uses the collapsible shovel to defend himself. Agamemnon becomes aggressive, mistaking the shovel for a firearm, and lunges at Peter, but Peter knocks the wolf back with the blade. As the wolf prepares to attack again, Peter hears growling behind him and knows that, if he stood little chance against one wolf, he’ll have no chance against two, but as he turns to gauge what he’s up against, Scratch, having found the boys, steps from the underbrush. As the wolf lunges, Scratch intercedes, and the wolf and dog collapse in a fight. In the tree, Chris breaks off a branch, and using twine, affixes his knife to its end. Scratch holds his own for a time, but before he’s overcome, Chris tosses Peter the spear and Peter rams it home, piercing Agamemnon’s breast. Unfortunately, this doesn’t kill the wolf, and the boy and wolf stand locked in position: wolf at the end of the spear, impaled but kicking, with Peter slipping back. Yet, right as Peter’s strength begins to fail, he hears a shot ring out in the night. The search party has found them, and Chris’s Uncle Dave has killed the wolf and delivered the boys from their peril.

As the boys recover, Peter experiences guilt. Not only did he put his own life at risk, he’d put Chris and Scratch in danger as well. As he learns what happened to Agamemnon—the way he’d been released after a life of captivity and had struggled to survive in the wild—he takes on that guilt as well. Berating himself for his choices, he talks to Chris about his feelings and turns to Dave for advice. Dave tells Peter that sometimes in life, there are no good decisions and you have to make the best bad decision you can. He says he’s been in situations like that and that he’s learned the best thing you can do is apologize, atone, and eventually, forgive yourself. Hearing this, Peter asks his parents if they can visit the wolf sanctuary, and his parents agree. Peter has always been a good student, excelling in science, and when he interacts with the wolves in a positive way, he decides he’d like to study conservation and devote himself to protecting forests and the animals that live within them, accepting who he is, knowing who he wants to be.