This was an unusual one. An interesting premise and promising start - a meltdown at a nuclear power station in America and the subsequent “fallout” as experienced by a teenage girl.
The voice of the teenage girl was credible but I felt the story could have been condensed. I was engaged for some parts and not others. ( )

Very powerful and interesting story. A slight mystery throughout the book, but not a mystery/suspense feeling. Written from a slightly too-precocious teenage perspective. ( )

A heartbreaking tale told by a homeless teenager living in a trash bag igloo . Six months ago, a nuclear plant inVermont experienced a cataclysmic meltdown, and both of Emily’s parents were killed. Devastatingly, her father was in charge and it may have been his fault. This is a story of loss, adventure, and the search for friendship in the wake of catastrophe. ( )

3.75 stars

Emily (grade 11) was at school when it happened. There was just a couple more days until the end of the school year. Both her parents worked at the nuclear plant in town. The kids at school only knew that sirens were going when they were loaded on to buses and taken away. Emily kept overhearing things about her parents, about how her drunk father had caused this. She needed to disappear. She didn’t want anyone to know she was their daughter, since they were being blamed for the meltdown.

Emily, who since changed her name to Abby, is telling the story in hindsight, and going back and forth in time, and she does jump around, as it’s kind of a conversational tone. There is one dividing line that makes it easier to tell when in time you are as you read: B.C. and A.C. (Before Cameron and After Cameron). Cameron is a young runaway boy that she takes under her wing, as they are both homeless on the streets of Burlington, Vermont.

The book is rough as it shows the life of a homeless teenage girl. I did cry a few times, usually in reference to Maggie, the dog Emily had left behind in the radioactive zone (not that she had a choice). I had to laugh at the “connection” between Emily Dickinson’s poems and the “Gilligan’s Island” theme (and then I sang the poems as they came up in the book)! I quite liked this and it got just a bit more interesting toward the end, but I’m not sure I liked it as much as others I’ve read by Bohjalian. ( )

Chris Bohjalian does a great job of capturing a teenage girl's voice in this thought-provoking story. In fact, on the audio version, his own daughter is the narrator. Emily Shepherd is a troubled teen in the best of times, but when the meltdown comes -- literally -- the nuclear reactor in her idyllic Vermont town, where both her parents are employed experiences a Chernobyl-size disaster, Emily becomes even more messed up, and grown-up simultaneously. Forced to evacuate her hometown, bused out of school to towns outside the exclusion zone, and unsure of her parents' (and beloved dog's) fate, Emily strikes out on a journey of independence. Her father was the plant's main engineer, so he is blamed for the whole thing and that keeps Emily from coming forward to try to be found or connected with anyone who can help her. She has no other viable family (elderly grandparents in nursing homes)and feels too ashamed to seek out friends. Instead she decides to survive on the streets by herself, predictably in the few ways teenage girls can. After a few months, she befriends a young boy, Cameron, and that alters her survival mode to be more maternal and wary, but when he becomes deathly ill, her whole house of cards tumbles down. The title refers to the advice given to children evacuated from the Sandy Hook school shooting as they navigated the carnage. It is equally applicable to Emily and her journey of self-discovery and survival. ( )