Between Heaven and Earth

Finished February 8
Between Heaven and Earth by Eric Walters

This is a great read and part of a very interesting series. DJ is gathered with the rest of the family to hear his grandfather's will being read. His grandfather was a vibrant person, compassionate and genuinely interested in others. He was very present in the lives of his grandsons and cared deeply for their mothers, his daughters. His wife died when his girls were still young, the youngest only four, and he raised them on his own.
He left a video message for his grandsons, and a special task for each one, fully funded from the estate.
DJ's task is to climb Kilimanjaro and release some of his grandfather's ashes at the top. DJ is very interested in sports and a quarterback on his football team. He thinks this task will be relatively easy. His twin brother Steve is also working to complete his task which has taken him to Spain.
When DJ gets to Tanzania, he finds many challenges, and not all of them are physical. He's a good kid, seventeen years old and always trying to do the right thing, but not always sure what that might be. He finds Kilimanjaro to be an unexpected challenge, one that physical strength isn't always the key to succeeding at. He makes friends, both older and younger than himself, and learns a lot more about himself, just as his grandfather had hoped for him.
As I said, this book is part of a series called Seven. There are seven grandsons, and their grandfather left them each a task. Each book tells the story of one of the grandsons, and each is by a different Canadian author. This is the first one I've read, but the idea is intriguing and I'll be interested in hunting down the others.