S. D. Crockett
The Sunday Times, Children's Book of the Week
This idiosyncratic thriller, set in a sixth ice age in 2059, is the story of 15-year-old Willo, who one day finds that everybody has gone from his remote homestead. His family were "stragglers", hand-to-mouth inhabitants of the countryside, whereas most people slave and starve in the cities. Believing his family has been betrayed, Willo sets out to find them and take revenge. On the way, he encounters 13-year-old Mary, abandoned in a hut with her dying brother, and together they reach the grim metropolis, with its tyrannical regime. This is a dark chronicle of a bleak, violent world in which children die and women are broken in the torture chamber. It is also a world in which it is hard to know who to trust and where Willo has to witness someone being shot in the head. Yet there is also a thread about love, hope and courage and an ending for Willo and Mary that is not quite what we expect.
I'm gonna sit here in my place on the hill behind the house. Waiting. And watching. Ain't nothing moving down there. The valley look pretty bare in the snow. Just the house grey and lonely down by the river all frozen. I got to think what I'm gonna do now that everyone gone. But I got my dog head on. The dog gonna tell me what to do. The dog gonna help me. The house look proper empty - don't it dog? You just sit quiet in these rocks Willo. Set in the haunting and barren landscape of a new ice age, AFTER THE SNOW is the story of fifteen-year-old Willo, a 'straggler' kid who loses his family in the opening pages. Completely alone, he is immediately flung into an icy journey of survival, adventure, friendship and self-discovery - with only the dog spirit inside his head to guide him. Meanwhile, across Britain, outlawed followers of survivalist John Blovyn are planning an escape to the fabled Islands talked of in a revolutionary book ...
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