Flicker

Stepsisters Millie and Rose live with their parents (Millie’s mom and Rose’s dad) and their baby brother in an underground bunker since the Flicker, a sun flare that devastated Earth. Now both parents are dead, the kids are running out of food and have to go. They head for Millie’s Seminole grandmother, who understood the Earth. The girls meet a guy, Ben, driving a bus with several kids. They’d been at summer camp when the Flicker happened. They try to avoid the Hive where really bad people live while searching for other survivors. Can these kids find their way to good people or are they doomed?

H. E. Edgmon has written an intense post-apocalyptic novel with an interesting cast of middle-grade characters and only a few adults to lend the occasional assist. The kids are forced to take on difficult roles at a time when they are still trying to figure out just who they really are. As they fight to stay alive, they learn to cooperate and care for each other. Millie and Rose start out tolerating each other but become true sisters. The writing is a bit uneven and the end predictable, but kids will love it.