In many of Catherine Ryan Hyde’s novels, journeys play a special part in terms of shaping and changing the main character or characters. Her latest novel is “Life, Loss, and Puffins,” and the protagonist, a “freakishly smart” thirteen year old and her new best friend Gabriel go on an adventure that changes their lives. Ru’s full name is Rumaki, because her mother thought it was the name of a famous Japanese warrior or philosopher. Unfortunately, it’s the name of an appetizer made from chicken liver, water chestnuts, and bacon, and it’s a name that Ru has been saddled with. In a manner of speaking, this misnomer is emblematic of Ru’s life, a life in which most of the people around her do not understand her or see her for who she really is. They see a child, but Ru is far from anything resembling a typical youngster.

As a child, Ru taught herself Latin and Euclidian geometry. She remembers everything she’s ever read, been told, or seen, so school is often boring. She explains, “No matter how many grades they skipped me over, it was still a matter of instantly getting what was being taught and then staring out the window and figuratively drumming my fingers until everybody else got it. All day, every day.” She thought going to college at the age of thirteen would change that, but to her chagrin, she finds that it’s just more of the same. She’s still smarter than most of her fellow students.

But when her mother allows her to attend a prestigious college far enough away from home that she must stay with a family in the college town, Ru meets Gabriel. He’s the son of the woman in whose house Ru is living, and he’s unlike anyone Ru has ever known. He has interesting things to say about life, and his perspective about the world around them is different from anything Ru has considered. They talk into the night through the vents that connect their bedrooms, and those conversations continue as he drives her to school and picks her up after. And while Gabriel is four years older than Ru, they share an obsession with Atlantic puffins, and they just click.

When Ru’s mother makes excuse after excuse to not visit her, Ru gets suspicious, especially because of her mother’s original reluctance to allow her to attend school so far from home and her subsequent sudden change of heart. So she finally asks Gabriel to drive her home to surprise her mother and see what is happening. It’s a really shocking visit because what Ru finds out is that her mother is dying and may only have weeks to live. She also finds out that the plan is for Ru to go to Kentucky to live with her Aunt Bitsy, a detestable woman.

Rather than live in Kentucky with her aunt, Ru decides to run away. So Ru and Gabriel devise a college list. Instead of a bucket list, it’s a list of things Ru wants to see or do or experience before she goes back to college. And Gabriel offers to go with her. It makes sense. He’s seventeen and can drive. Ru wants to go to the darkest place in the country to see the stars, she wants to see the Aurora Borealis, and they both want to see the Atlantic puffins. So after some plotting and planning, they take off together.

One of the things that Hyde excels at is the manner in which she portrays her main characters, many of whom are different in some aspect of their personality, their characters, their physical appearance, or their outlook. Ru is brilliant on a level that most of us can’t comprehend, but she doesn’t really know what it is to have fun. Gabriel is non-binary, and he likes to wear makeup and fingernail polish. At certain times in the story, he is made to tone down what he sees as being himself, so as to conform to the prejudices of others who might look askance at the “real” Gabriel. Both youngsters just want the freedom to be themselves without the strictures that society and narrow-minded people create.

The pair are lucky in their travels, and they meet some very wonderful people. Their journey is amazing, but as real life always proves, all good things must come to an end. And at the end of their trip is something Ru, for all her intelligence, hadn’t considered, Gabriel is in big trouble for taking an underage girl out of the country. So as they return from a phenomenal visit to the Canadian Northwest Territories to see the Aurora Borealis, they are stopped at the border. Ru is sent back to her aunt, and Gabriel is taken into custody. It doesn’t matter that their relationship is purely platonic, and that Ru and Gabriel consider themselves siblings. Family.

I believe that in every Catherine Ryan Hyde novel, she shares something of herself with us, something that’s important to her or that she thinks is important for us to know. In this novel, she shares her feelings about space with us as well as the reason she is interested in photographing space. If you follow Hyde on social media, you may be aware that she is an extremely talented astrophotographer. In this novel, Ru asks her teacher in Introduction to Astrophysics a question about how she feels knowing that our knowledge of space is constantly changing. Her professor responds, “Its impenetrable nature makes it something like a higher power to me. The very nature of it stretches my brain almost to the breaking point, and that’s pretty much the textbook definition of awe, in my opinion. And awe is good. If you want a piece of advice, always choose to live your life in a way that promotes awe. Forget the solid-ground thing. Go for the awe.” At another point in the story, after viewing the stars in a clear sky, Ru describes the reason she loves space: “It makes you stretch your mind.” For the sake of brevity, these are not the complete quotes, but suffice to say that this is the basis for how Ru decides to live her life from that point on. To embrace the awe.

Hyde also likes to explore characters who are still in their childhood. Ru is a complex character because while she’s still just thirteen, she’s an adult in many important ways. At one point, she says that her childhood ended the day she entered kindergarten, but this trip demonstrates that her childhood is ending yet again. Gabriel’s childhood ended when he realized that there were times he needed to hide what he calls the “real” Gabriel, because others wouldn’t understand him or take him seriously. Interesting book club questions regarding this would be: At what point in our lives does our childhood end? What point is the most obvious ending of their childhood for these two characters?

At one point in the novel, Ru and Gabriel talk about the magic of the universe, and how sometimes things that appear to be random are really kinds of patterns. Gabriel says it’s like a row of dominoes that are set up, and each one knocks over the next one. Does the universe push us so we bump into the next domino so that the pattern continues? Were Ru and Gabriel fated to meet and somehow each complete and support the other? In this novel, while there are supporting adult characters, it’s the children who state the universal truths that Hyde wants to share with readers. And they do it beautifully and compellingly.

This review was first posted on Bookreporter.com.