Book Review - Seed Savers, Book 4; Keeper

The fourth installment of the Seed Saver series by Sandra Smith begins with Lily, Arturo, and James hiding out in a Pacific Islander camp in the mountains of North Carolina. The world is safe and protected, but James knows that he cannot stay in hiding for long. Eventually the team relocates to the city of Portland, Oregon and rejoins the Seed Saver revolution. In the meantime, Clare and Dante are finishing their Seed Saver training in Canada, but discover they cannot safely go home to their mother. Eventually they are spirited away and reunited with Lily in Oregon.

As the story progresses, so does the action in the story. Rose has been recruited to be a member trained by the GRIM, and her adoptive guardians follow Trinia out west; tensions escalate, along with political unrest; an unknown source has begun leaking political information from the past creating more dissension for all factions. Between the Seed Saver movement, the mysterious Jalil, GRIM, and the political unrest chaos is beginning to seem eminent. It is this 4th novel in the series in which the tone becomes increasingly more dystopian, although less violently so than the Divergent or Hunger Games series. Where will it all lead?

Eerily reflective of so many things in our current society, this series can create great discussions for students; about political control, cover-up of harmful information, and about political unrest, the topic of food preservation, or even as basic as how seeds can be genetically modified in the name of good health and profit.