Title: The Dead and the Gone
Author: Susan Beth Pfeffer
Genre: Young Adult, Dystopian
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Source: Purchased
Parental Warning: death, famine, criminal activity

“In spite of himself, he found a piece of paper and a pen and began making a list.  Lists no longer comforted him, but he made them anyway when he couldn’t sleep.  There was no point making a list of what they had, since they didn’t have anything.  There was no point in making a list of what they would need, since they needed everything.  There was no point, but he still made a list.”

Summary (from publisher):
When life as Alex Morales had known it changed forever, he was working behind the counter at Joey’s Pizza.  He was worried about getting elected as senior class president and making the grades to land him in a good college.  He never expected that an asteroid would hit the moon, knocking it closer in orbit to the earth and catastrophically altering the earth’s climate.

He never expected to be fighting just to stay alive.  When Alex’s parents disappear in the aftermath of tidal waves, he must care for his two younger sisters, even as Manhattan becomes a deadly wasteland.

Opinion:
Pfeffer continues her post-apocolyptic moon series with a stark urban counterpart to the rural setting of the first.  The main character, Alex, is a New York City boy with a large family — two younger sisters, an older brother in the service and parents who work hard.  When the moon shifts his family is dispersed enough that Alex assumes temporary responsibility for his sisters.  Now suddenly thrust into the role of primary caretaker his life alters considerably from the future he envisioned.   In this way I thought the book took advantage of it’s greatest strength — the characters.  An ordinary boy his age, with a pizza parlor job, concentrating on school and the future instantly finds himself with a whole different set of responsibilities than envisioned.  That drop of a hat shift in his focus overtook and overwhelmed his life.

The other great strength of this book was that Pfeffer showed us the other side of the coin.  In book one we got to see a family struggle through this catastrophic event from a place where things were so geographically dispersed.  It was extremely difficult to get news or see neighbors or get to provisions because of the distance between homes and town.  In this version it was easier to maintain some level of communication even if the information shared wasn’t anything that would necessarily help those struggling with the situation.

What struck me as odd, though, is that I was expecting far more chaos in the streets in this version.  We got was far more subdued than I had anticipated it would be in such a circumstance.  Don’t get me wrong there was the typical (and some creepy not so typical) looting and there was rationing and food bank lines that seemed to stretch for days so it wasn’t completely out of synch with my overall expectations;  but I suppose I had it in my mind things would be a bit more closer to Stephen King’s The Stand where there is violence and car burning in the streets.  This softer tone didn’t ruin anything for me as a reader it was just different.

This book placed a much greater emphasis on religion and faith than its predecessor.  Book one did touch lightly on the religious aspect of an apocolyptic event but was surprisingly low key about it.  This book, however, felt like it went a bit further to the extreme to make up for it.  Not so much so that it was over the top or unrealistic but it was a noticeable change in tone and was a large part of the story as told.  The way faith and religion infused within the story allowed for the theme to branch out in several directions across several characters.

There was much realism to the story told. We saw famine resulting in starvation, crime, debilitating illness, family squabbles, love and loss.  We even got to see heroism in the face of extenuating circumstances.  Above all there was hope to be had.  Though not my favorite of the series thus far, if you enjoyed book one you’ll likely enjoy book two as well.