In “The Trouble With Heroes,” Kate Messner’s wonderful new novel in verse, 13-year-old Finn Connelly is in crisis. He’s trying to process the sudden loss of his distant, first-responder father: “When I think about Dad/I remember him gone —/off fighting fires,/rescuing everybody but us.” Because of incomplete schoolwork, he’s in danger of failing seventh grade. And now he’s facing vandalism charges after being caught on video kicking over the tombstone of the local legend Edna Grace Thomas — one of the first women to climb all 46 Adirondack High Peaks, and a longtime “corresponding secretary” for the Adirondack 46ers.

While Finn is at his lowest point, his main make-up assignment, ironically, is to draft a collection of poems about heroes. His teacher even suggests he write about his father, who, more than 20 years earlier, on Sept. 11, was captured in an award-winning photo carrying a wounded survivor out of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. “Yeah./Maybe not,” Finn fires back in what he titles “Introductory Poem for the Stupid Poetry Project.” How can he write about his heroic father when he feels like such a disappointment?

But then he catches a break. Rather than press charges, Edna’s daughter offers Finn an alternative path to make things right. Over the course of the summer, he must fulfill the goal her mother hoped to achieve before she died: to summit those same 46 High Peaks again, with her dog, Seymour.

Finn kicks off a three-month journey of self-discovery that tests him both physically and emotionally. His initial hike is a bust. He doesn’t pack the right equipment. He wears the wrong footwear. He foolishly starts with the highest peak instead of getting his “mountain legs” on easier trails.

He learns his lesson the hard way: “Sometimes when you climb mountains/there are mountains in the way/and you have to climb those mountains/before you get to the mountain/you were trying to climb in the first place.” Gradually, Finn begins to embrace his summer of “climbing out of trouble.”

One of the most satisfying through lines in the book follows the often touching interactions he has with a small rotation of “trail nannies.”“The Trouble With Heroes” is a timely, enduring story that reminds us that even the toughest fathers carry emotions worth sharing. What a gift it would be if more boys, and more young people in general, had access to our vulnerability.