Ways the World Could End
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist for Best General Fiction
Dave is a Dad with Asperger's.
He sees the world differently than most, and he feels like he has no idea what he’s doing when it comes to raising his 15-year-old daughter, Cleo. She also feels like he has no idea what he’s doing, especially now that her mom is gone.
They were both better off when Jana was around—Dave's wife, Cleo's mother. But now she's not, and they are left to figure out life on their own. Dave dedicates his attention to his newfound hobby of doomsday prepping, researching the various ways the world could end. Cleo feels like her world already has.
Everything changes when neighbors move in, threatening their isolation in the hills of San Juan Capistrano. Cleo is intrigued by the new girl, Edie, and soon finds out the intrigue is mutual. Dave, not at all intrigued, is forced to come to terms with everything he cannot control.
As they struggle to live in the present, both Dave and Cleo must dare to revisit the tragic past they share. What happened to Jana? Who was she, really? Who are they without her?
Ways the World Could End is a story of grief, friendship, and love—the love between parents and children, between spouses, between teenagers, and between strangers. It is a story that requires us to consider the bounds of forgiveness, what we’re willing and not willing to forgive, and reminds us that often the hardest thing to forgive is ourselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hooper (All the Acorns on the Forest Floor) offers an insightful and finely crafted look at how a family copes with grief. There's Dave Garrison, a doomsday-obsessed and neurodivergent widower, and his 15-year-old daughter, Cleo. Each tries in their own ways to deal with the loss of Dave's wife and Cleo's mom, Jana, in what the reader eventually learns was a violent incident. Their story unfolds in alternating narration from their home in the isolated San Juan Capistrano hills of Orange County, Calif. Dave's chapters open with various doomsday scenarios (a volcano, an earthquake, bio-warfare) that fuel his preoccupation with building a bunker to keep his family safe. A few years into their marriage, Dave and Jana see a therapist and he gets what he calls "The Label," his diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. This brings relief to Jana, and helps her understand his trouble with emotions. As the truth slowly emerges about Jana's death, the author wrenchingly portrays its devastating circumstances and outcome. Hooper also realistically conveys how Dave navigates life with ASD and effectively captures Cleo's teen angst as she becomes enamored of the new girl in her class. This memorable and stirring story of survival brings the goods.
