The Dead & the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer (Book Review)

Title: The Dead & the Gone
Author: Susan Beth Pfeffer
Publisher: Harcourt

My synopsis: Alex is 17, a junior in high school, and living in New York City when the moon is hit by asteroid and knocked off it's axis. His mom is called in to the hospital she works at to help deal with the emergency and his dad is in Mexico attending a funeral. Alex does not realize it at the time, but neither parent will return and he is left to care for his 2 younger sisters, Briana and Julie.

Where Life As We Knew It was a teenager's perspective of the catastrophe in a smaller, more rural area - The Dead and the Gone deals with a teenager's perspective in a large city. As the realization that everything has changed becomes evident, Alex decides to send Briana to the country to live and work at a convent. She will be helping with the farming, but she will also have food to eat everyday, which will mean the food supplies he has for himself and Julie will last longer.

Even with Briana gone, things are still tough. Alex becomes hardened to seeing dead bodies everywhere and soon is taking things off the bodies to trade for food. As the weather becomes uncharacteristically cooler, Julie and Alex continue to live alone and attend school in order to get the free food at lunch. They return home one day to find Briana home, suffering from asthma. She was sent home because she could no longer work outside. Now the food that was in short supply already just became more meager. How much longer can they survive like this?

My thoughts: This book also had an underlying theme of hope in a hopeless situation - and of a family growing closer together and overcoming adversity together. Alex already seemed to be somewhat mature and ready for responsibility. I think the real growth came from Julie though. She was the youngest and as all younger children tend to be, a little spoiled. Alex did not get along with her at all, so was happy for Briana's interference. It was hard for him to send Briana away because that meant he would have to deal with Julie alone. Julie quickly grows up though, and becomes a big help to Alex, hardly ever complaining and joining Alex in caring for Briana when she returns. I am looking forward to the next book The World We Live In to see where things will go from here.

The Dead & the Gone
Publisher/Publication Date: Harcourt, 2008 (though a paperback version was just published this month from Graphia)
ISBN: 978-0-15-206311-5
321 pages










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Library Loot: 12-2-2009

I have been spending way too much time at the library recently - the problem is that I have actually been combing back over all my Friday Finds and Waiting on Wednesdays and reserving them!

Library Loot is hosted by Eva at A Striped Armchair and Marg at Reading Adventures.

The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer

When life as Alex Morales had known it changed forever, he was working behind the counter at Joey's Pizza. He was worried about getting elected as senior class president and making the grades to land him in a good college. He never expected that an asteroid would hit the moon, knocking it closer in orbit to the earth and catastrophically altering the earth's climate.

He never expected to be fighting just to stay alive.

Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life As We Knew It enthralled and devastated readers with its brutal but hopeful look at an apocalyptic event from a small-town perspective. Now this harrowing companion novel examines the same events as they unfold in New York City, revealed through the eyes of a seventeen-year-old Puerto Rican New Yorker. When Alex's parents disappear in the aftermath of tidal waves, he must care for his two younger sisters, even as Manhattan becomes a deadly wasteland.

With haunting themes of family, faith, personal change, and courage, this powerful novel explores how a young man takes on unimaginable responsibilities. (inside cover)

The Last Summer of Her Other Life by Jean Reynolds Page

From Jean Reynolds Page - the critically acclaimed author of The Space Between Before and After and one of the most compelling voices in contemporary women's fiction -- comes a dazzling novel of loss and redemption, of relationships that damage and those that heal.

Thirty-nine and pregnant by a man she's decided to leave behind in California, Jules' life is changing. Always the protected daughter, she must now relinquish that role and prepare to be a mother herself. But her efforts are upstaged by shocking allegations from a local teen in her North Carolina hometown. The boy has accused her of what the police are calling "inappropriate sexual contact." Three men rally in her defense: Lincoln, her brother, who flies in from New York to help her; Sam, her high school boyfriend, who after so many years still offers unconditional support; and Walt, the uncle of the teen, who charms Jules with his intelligence and unanticipated kindness.

Her search for the truth about the troubled teenager becomes, for Jules, a first step toward discovering the woman she wishes to be. But with so many wrong choices behind her, how can she trust herself with the future of her unborn child? (back cover)