The Flicker
by H. E. Edgmon
Intermediate, Middle School    Feiwel    256 pp.
9/24    9781250873972    $19.99
Paper ed.  9781250873965    $9.99
e-book ed.  9781250873989    $9.99

In this near-future dystopian novel, a solar flare has left a fraction of humanity alive. The book opens with Millie burying her stepdad outside their Appalachian bunker while her stepsister Rose looks on. Millie, who cheekily wishes that having a Native grandmother would give her intuitive survival skills, takes charge of their baby brother Sammy, with an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and a lot of anxiety. Rose, a non-Native southerner, is impulsive, angry, and possibly neurodivergent. The novel’s point of view switches between the two siblings, and readers may have to get used to the southern vernacular not only in dialogue but throughout the third-person narrative. Millie and Rose set out to find Millie’s grandma, a Seminole elder in South Carolina—though Rose has hopes of finding the Sanctuary, a coalition of survivors fighting the Hive, a lair of the mega-rich with a kill-or-be-killed mentality. The siblings encounter a group of kids their own age led by their former camp counselor, who drives a renovated school bus running on scavenged gas. Millie and Rose learn that living through the apocalypse means “we all just get to be whatever we wanna be. Whyever we wanna be it.” Edgmon, who identifies as Indigenous and trans/nonbinary, has written an anti-capitalist, intersectional cautionary tale accessible to a middle-grade audience.

From the ">November/December 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.