The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer
This is the second book in Pfeffer’s “The Last Survivors” trilogy, which began with Life As We Knew It. Both books describe the aftermath of a terrible disaster in which the moon is struck by a meteor and knocked out of its orbit. When the moon shifts, terrible events begin taking place on Earth, from giant tsunamis, to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
In Life As We Knew It, the action follows a teen named Miranda and her family in rural Pennsylvania as they deal with the disaster and its various consequences, such as lack of communication, sporadic electricity, and outbreaks of illness. In The Dead and The Gone the action moves to New York City, where high school junior Alex Morales and his family must deal with these same issues, but in a very different environment. Alex and his two sisters have been separated from the rest of their family by the catastrophe – their mother, a nurse, was called in to work following the disaster and never returned, and their father was stranded (or possibly killed) by a tsunami in Puerto Rico where he had gone to attend a funeral.
Now Alex must take responsibility for his sisters, twelve-year-old Julie and fourteen-year-old Bri, as resources in the city begin to dwindle and humanity crumbles around them. It becomes more and more clear that Alex must find a way out of the city before it is too late for his family.
Pfeffer has begun this series with a fascinating premise, but what makes the books such page-turners are the realistic characters she places in this extraordinary situation. The reader quickly identifies with Miranda and Alex and wants to see them survive. It’s also interesting to read how different people react to such an earth-shattering event in such different ways.
I’m looking forward to reading (or listening) to the final book in the trilogy, This World We Live In, which will tie the two previous stories together. I listened to both of the first two books on audio. It was strange to be walking or driving in the sunshine while listening to stories in which the characters are dealing with frigid temperatures and little or no heat, but the audio versions were both well done.
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