I was blown away by this book. Simple, everyday living by a local parapalegic, living in my own neighborhood. It is told with honesty, dignity and self deprecating humor.
I loved Life As We Knew It, a book that seemed to haunt me for weeks. So I had high, high expectations for The Dead and the Gone, a companion book about the same catastrophic events. And it is every bit as good as the first.
If Life As We Knew It was set in rural America, The Dead and the Gone is set in New York and centers on the Morales family. 17-year-old Alex is left to look after his two sisters as his father was in Puerto Rico and his mother was on her way to work when an asteroid hits the moon and knocks it out of orbit. They deal with people disappearing, food shortages, early, bitter winter, illness, volcanic ash in the sky, rats, but unlike Like As We Knew It, this is about faith and how one family can retain hope in such horrifying circumstances.
If anything, this moving story is even more brutal and even darker, despite knowing where the story must inevitably go. It is never obvious, and is as captivating as it is devastating. And it made me cry.
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