The Top of the World by Ethan Joella
Published by Scribner
Publication date: June 30, 2026
Genres: Book Clubs, Fiction, Coming-of-age, Historical, Vacation Reading 
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When Maggie’s older brother, Chip disappears for the summer after the end of his senior year in high school it’s a big deal. Because it’s probably the last summer he’ll ever have and she and her parents are left alone and wondering if they’ll ever see him again. They do, but he never says anything about his time away. A year later Maggie seeks some kind of closure around his death by trying to find where he went. Through two timelines, with Maggie and Chip narrating their own chapters, events unspool in Ethan Joella’s new novel, The Top of the World.
It’s 1974 and Chip’s dedication and discipline have earned him a full ride baseball scholarship to Penn State. He’s ready for the next chapter in his life until the crushing diagnosis of a terminal illness brings all plans for a future to a halt. He needs to escape the realities of his situation and wants one final summer without the weight and worry of his illness. To hold onto the person he was, Chip leaves home and takes a job at a family-run resort in the Poconos.
The following year, still reeling from Chip’s death, Maggie heads to the Poconos to uncover a part of her brother’s life she never knew. She should be making plans for her own future, but instead becomes obsessed with the final mystery of his life: where he disappeared to for three months the previous summer. He never spoke of it, but a small clue among his belongings leads her to The Red Maple, a family-run resort.
Into their individual chapters Joella weaves simple but heart-rending scenes of Maggie and Chip together as they are forced to cope with one of the most difficult life situations—the death of a sibling and dying while so young and vital. Maggie watches him winnowed down from her exuberant older brother to a fragile shell while Chip tries to maintain his hearty demeanor in the face of horrible pain. Expressing the anguish of this progression for both is one of Joella’s strengths as a writer. There is no grandiosity, no sweeping declarations, simply the quiet surrender of days sitting by the bedside of a loved one as they slowly transition from one stage of life to the next. The pathos is deeply affecting.
This aspect of the story and then Maggie’s journey to connect with a part of her brother she never got to know was enough for me, but Joella takes it further by adding a mystery. A mystery that felt almost like an intrusion in what was the most private time of Chip’s life, the last span when he could just be. Instead, everything is tied up with a bow. That threw me, because I see Joella as a writer who is deeply respectful of his characters and so understated in his portrayal of their lives that nothing is ever quite that neat. I didn’t need this to be a trauma novel, but Joella’s gentle tugging at the heart ended up feeling more insistent than in his previous works. I enjoyed The Top of the World, but A Quiet Life is still my favorite of his books.
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*I received a free copy of this book from Scribner in exchange for an honest review.*
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