The Eleventh Plague ~ Jeff Hirsch

First a disclaimer: Stephen is exactly the type of character that I want to slap into reality.

For all the same reasons that I really don't like Holden Caufield — self-absorption, inability to judge results over appearance, and just bad teen decisions — I don't really identify with Stephen Quinn. But this is a good story, certainly a good alternative for a view of the future that may be without a close inspection of the blood an gore that many post-apocalypse books dish up.

The end of the world has come and gone and these are the leftovers. (Yes, that is beginning to sound like a refrain.) But this end is entirely believable. The US and China get into a war over very little. China sends a super-flu in dirty bombs and wipes out much of North America. Those that survive are reduced to Stone Age technology and resources. There is little fuel. There are no cities. There are few population centers; most survivors are nomadic.

We come into this world not even a generation after the destruction. Stephen, at 16, was born into the new world. He loses all his family in the ensuing years: grandmother, mother, sister, grandfather, father. And as his father is dying he encounters a community like none he has ever known. They live in houses. They look out for each other, mostly. They do not steal and scavenge. They are rediscovering what it means to be human. But human with deep scars. All of them have terrible memories.

Stephen must learn to rise above his feral nomadic existence. And he must learn to hope. Both daunting tasks for a teen, apparently.

For those two lessons, I would recommend this book! Even with the strong urge to scream at the characters not to do such dumb things at every turn. But that, really, is the crux of being a teenager no matter what your circumstances.