Crossing the Deep

Sixteen-year-old Rachel Harker expects her church youth group's hiking trip in the Smoky Mountains to be uneventful. When a hidden hole twists her ankle on the trail, Asher Jenkins — a skeptic who only came on the trip to avoid his abusive uncle — stays behind to help her, then goes for help when he can't get her out alone.

He can't find his way back to the trail before a sudden rainstorm floods Deep Creek, cutting off any way out and stranding them both. With supplies running low and the temperature dropping, Rachel and Asher are forced to depend on each other to survive — and to confront the question that divides them: Rachel's unshaken faith in God against Asher's conviction that faith is wasted effort.

The first book in Kelly Martin's Crossing duology, followed by Crossing the Divide.