Half Lives
Postapocalyptic survival fiction gets a unique treatment in Grant’s thoughtful thriller. Seventeen-year-old Icie’s normal life ends with a 911 text from her parents, high-level government employees. Alerted to an imminent bioterrorist attack, the family heads for an abandoned bunker in the Nevada mountains, intended to be a nuclear waste repository before the project was cut—but they are split up along the way. With a backpack of supplies, $10,000, and a crude map, Icie and three teens she meets find the bunker, but survival at any cost quickly begins to take its toll. Icie’s story is only half the tale: generations later, a mountain community worship a deity called the I AM, and fear venomous terrorists, whom they believe have taken residence in a neighboring area. The two stories converge as both groups discover the mountain’s dangerous secret. The terror and pathos of Icie’s story is most immediately compelling, but discovering how her actions form the basis of this future society makes for a clever, intriguing look at how meaning evolves over generations. This is a smart, scary novel. Grades 9-12. --Krista Hutley