by Andrew Smith
First published 2015
Fifteen-year-old Ariel has lost everything. He alone survived the attack that destroyed his Middle Eastern village. Now he lives with adoptive parents in Sunday, West Virginia, trying to rebuild a life from nothing. His summer takes him to a technology detox camp where boys surrender their devices and confront themselves without digital shields. But Ariel's story weaves through time and space alongside other fractured lives. A mentally ill bomber plots destruction while wrestling with his own demons. An arctic explorer from the 1800s records his expedition's slow collapse in diary entries that span decades. A bionic crow, reborn and deeply melancholic, watches it all unfold. These separate threads pull against each other across different eras, each character struggling with survival, loss, and what it means to be human when the world breaks apart around you. Ariel must navigate not just his own trauma and displacement, but the strange connections that bind him to these other damaged souls across time.
Genres: adventure, coming-of-age, 21st-century, adoption
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, fractured-timeline
Setting: Middle East, West Virginia
Period: 1800s, 21st Century
277 pages · Paperback · Electric Monkey
Content warnings: mental-illness