Instructions for the End of the World: A Novel - Hardcover

Kain, Jamie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1250047862 ISBN 13: 9781250047861

Verlag: St. Martin's Griffin, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

He prepared their family for every natural disaster known to man-except for the one that struck.

When Nicole Reed's father forces her family to move to a remote area of the Sierra Foothills, one without any modern conveniences, it's too much too handle for her mother, who abandons them in the middle of the night. Heading out to track her down, Nicole's father leaves her in charge of taking care of the house and her younger sister, Izzy. For a while, Nicole is doing just fine running things on her own. But then the food begins to run out, the pipes crack, and forest fires start slowly inching their way closer every day. Wolf, a handsome boy from the neighboring community, offers to help her when she needs it most, but when she starts to develop feelings for him, feelings she knows she will never be allowed to act on once her father returns, she must make a decision. With her family falling apart, will she choose to continue preparing for tomorrow's disasters, or will she take a chance and really start living for today?

Jamie Kain's Instructions for the End of the World is a gripping, young adult novel that explores family, friendship, and love in the midst of the most difficult and dangerous circumstances.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

JAMIE KAIN grew up in Kentucky but has had a nomadic adulthood. She is now settled in Sacramento, California with her husband and three children. Wherever she goes, her devoted writing and jogging partner, a pit bull mix named Reno, can nearly always be found at her side. She is also the author of The Good Sister.

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Instructions for the End of the World

By Jamie Kain

St. Martin's Press

Copyright © 2015 Jamie Kain
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-250-04786-1

Contents

Title Page, 
Copyright Notice, 
Dedication, 
Part I: The End of the World as We Know It, 
Part II: You're on Your Own, 
Part III: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, 
About the Author, 
Also by Jamie Kain, 
Copyright, 

CHAPTER 1

WOLF

July 6, 2002

From the edge of the forest, you can catch the world unaware. You can watch like a silent animal, and you can observe what people don't want you to see.

If you were the one sitting in the crook of the madrone tree, you would hear the car and the truck on the gravel road before you saw them emerge into the clearing and stop in front of a forlorn house.

A man gets out of the white truck and walks to the driver's side of the car, where a woman sits inside without opening the door. He tries the door handle, but it must be locked. Then he says something. It looks as if they are having a standoff.

Their vehicles are new, shiny, clean, waxed, like cars in commercials — a silver sedan and the large white truck, which is towing a matching white camper trailer. These are nothing like the dusty cars in which I have grown up riding.

Adjusting myself in the crook of the tree to keep my left leg from falling asleep, I press my shoulder into the chill of the wood. The madrone is called the refrigerator tree because even on the hottest days it feels cold to the touch. No one really knows why. I am grateful for it on this day when the heat bears down like a malevolent force.

I sit still and silent, practicing this skill. It's what I imagine the Native Americans did in these woods hundreds of years ago, before white people came.

After awhile I am rewarded with the sight of a hare, its dust-brown fur stretched over a long, lean body, as it eases out of a burrow. A few seconds later the ears of several baby hares poke up, their velvet black eyes peering out at the world, looking for their mother. I know from watching that they won't venture out, not until she invites them to do so in whatever silent language of movement they use. She will nudge them back into the burrow again and again, until they are large enough to search out food and fast enough to evade predators.

And even then, only a few of them will survive, if they're lucky.

I understand the balance nature seeks — the need for the hawk to eat the hare — but I have never felt at peace with its harshness. I don't begin to understand why life, so excruciatingly fragile, so breathtaking in its delicate beauty, can be destroyed with such ease. Mahesh would say that no life is truly destroyed, that it just returns to the Great Mother Earth to live again, but tell that to the hare trying to keep her babies alive.

Then again, she probably understands it far better than I do.

Finally the woman, small and dark-haired, gets out of the car and stands next to it, arms crossed over her chest, posture stiff as a redwood. Then she picks her way across the overgrown yard and up onto the porch, followed by the man.

If you were the one watching now, you would know the rush of pleasure to see the girl who climbs out of the passenger seat of the pickup truck and follows after her parents. Although I am too far away for fine details, I get the general impression of her: long dark hair in a braid down her back, narrow limbs, jeans, a white tank top. A species unto herself, she moves without seeming the least bit disturbed by her unkempt surroundings.

L

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: St. Martin's Griffin
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1250047862
• ISBN 13: 9781250047861
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: KreGa Onlinehandel GmbH; 4950000000000; info@krega-onlinehandel.de; ; Birkenweg 31; Brakel; 33034; Deutschland