I read this book in fourth grade or so, while we were stuck in the car on a hot day, driving endless around Northern California. It was an incredibly depressing book.

I read this in middle school, and it traumatized the hell out of me. It begins before nuclear bombs go off, and then pitilessly takes a few characters (children and one of their parents) through their attempts to survive. To this day I put covers over my drinking water so that radioactive dust won't drift down and contaminate it, as I vividly remember it doing in this book.
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The nuclear war has begun. Who will survive and what kind of life will they be left with when the dust clears? This book follows one family that is split up as the bombs fall on Great Britain, and what happens when their descendents are reunited.

A great book on preparedness, adaptation, change and acceptance of that change and how we can make the best of a really bad thing. ( )

The nuclear war has begun. Who will survive and what kind of life will they be left with when the dust clears? This book follows one family that is split up as the bombs fall on Great Britain, and what happens when their descendents are reunited.

A great book on preparedness, adaptation, change and acceptance of that change and how we can make the best of a really bad thing. ( )

I have a great soft spot for apocalyptic teenage fiction, so was expecting to love this, surprised that I'd never read it when I was a teenager and devouring Brother in the Land and Z for Zachariah. There was lots in it I liked - the contrast between the survivors outside and the people leaving the bunker and the conflicts this created was a really interesting thought I hadn't seen done before. But as an adult reader it all felt a bit clumsy and laid on with a trowel - Sarah's 'I will die, but I will make sure Catherine lives' was far too resigned and prim and fatalistic for most teenage heroines. Likewise Simon's final acceptance that Laura and the mutants are a beautiful, better future. There's also a big dollop of 'God has a great plan which he is working out despite our idiocies' which probably appeals to some people more than others. ( )