During-the-Event
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
For D.E., only two certainties exist: his grandfather is dead and life will never be the same.
During-the-Event is a dystopian adventure that roams across a fallen United States, introducing an unforgettable cast of characters along the way. In the near future, climate change has ravaged the United States, leading the government to overcorrect through culls and relocation. Those who survive the mandated destruction are herded into “habitable production zones,” trading their freedom for illusions of security. The few who escape learn quickly that the key to survival is to stay hidden in the corners of the country. For seventeen years, During-the-Event, or D.E., has lived free in a pastoral life with his grandfather in North Dakota. But when death reaches their outpost. D.E. is forced on a journey that will change his life—and reveal surprises about his past.
Once taught that strangers are only sources of pain, D.E. must learn to trust the people he meets on his journey. During-the-Event is a soaring coming-of-age story that grapples with achingly familiar issues: coming to terms with loss and loneliness, finding what our identities really mean, and searching for love in an often strange and bewildering world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This coming-of-age tale set in a dystopian America explores deep themes of trust and loss. Young teen D.E. has only ever known a solitary existence in rural North Dakota with his adoptive grandfather, Otis, who claims membership in the Hidatsa Indian tribe. After environmental disasters ravaged the States, the united governments of U.S., Canada, and Mexico attempted to reduce the population of "old, sick, hungry, displaced, unskilled, and undesirable people." This continental genocide left few survivors. Some have been moved to the Center, where they live in drug-induced bliss, but D.E. and Otis are among the Overlooked, and Otis makes sure they stay that way, hiding them both whenever someone approaches and teaching D.E. traditional skills for living off the land. When Otis dies, it is up to D.E. to make his own way in a harsh new world. As he encounters different people who come across his home of White Earth River, he learns difficult truths about Otis, his parents, and the patchwork remnants of civilization. Wall's careful characterization balances teenage growing pains with the maturity forced by scrabbling for survival, and he creates an intimate human portrait of D.E. and those he meets. Fans of literary dystopian fiction such as Cormac McCarthy's The Road will appreciate Wall's vivid, powerful vision of the future.
