Away (fiction)

Leave your family behind...
Abandon all your technology...
Venture into an uncertain future...

Could you be as brave as Rachel? Could you live in the Unified States whose heartless government refused to rescue any of its citizens who were stuck on the other side of the Line when the crazybombs fell?

This compelling sequel to Hall's first novel (review) takes us to the other side of The Line where "the Others" have lived a generation among ruined buildings with no electricity, scavenging what they can and trying to keep their children alive long enough for them to grow up. Perhaps these psychically gifted kids can help this fragile society survive attacks from ferocious mutant animals and equally ferocious humans who've embraced their savage side with a vengeance.

This couldn't really happen in our future, could it?
**kmm

Book info: Away / Teri Hall. Dial Books, 2011. [author's website] [publisher site]

My Recommendation: Rachel knows she can never return home if she crosses the Line, but it’s the only way to save a man’s life. So she carries medicine into a primitive land – the land where the government stranded some of its own citizens when it sealed the country against enemy invasions when a terrible weapon was unleashed.

Seeing something – someone - on the other side of the Line’s energy field was amazing and dangerous for them both. Pathik asks her to find medicine to cure his father, and Rachel is amazed at her own willingness to risk sneaking anything past the government’s ruthless Enforcement Office.

After her dad Daniel was reported dead in the early fighting, Rachel and her mom were safe at Miss Vivian’s property away from the city. But even in little towns, the EO keeps tabs on everyone and wants to know why Rachel has run away from home and where she went.

Far away from the Line, Rachel finds a world of mutated animals and scant resources. Without the psychic gifts of the other teens here, she’s a liability to her new community until she learns survival skills. Each small village keeps to itself, and only a few Travelers dare to cross the barren land between settlements.

When they hear that Daniel the Traveler has been captured by a nearby village noted for its brutality, the leaders of Pathik’s village decide to rescue him. They reluctantly allow Rachel to go on the mission since only she knows how to use the modern tools she brought across the Line.

Could this Daniel possibly be her Daniel, her father sent unwillingly into battle across the Line? Rachel has to face the dangers to find out.

Can Rachel survive without the psychic gifts that everyone else has here? Can she really make it in a world without technology? What will the EO do to her mom and Miss Vivian since Rachel crossed the Line and went Away?

The dystopian future of Rachel’s life may be closer than we think, closer than we’d like to believe… sequel to The Line. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy courtesy of the publisher.