Their respect and love for each other increase.

Then when Darla’s mother is tragically raped and killed, her house and barn burned, Darla joins Alex on the journey to find his parents.Įven with their combined reserves of strength and ingenuity, their travel is unimaginably difficult and life threatening. There he finds Darla and her mother who save his life. After he is stabbed in a fight, he stumbles into a barn, near death from loss of blood. Murder, cruelty, cannibalism and greed stalk every mile of the journeyīut Alex also experiences kindness along his route. His trek is horrific, grueling, terrifying and full of despair. His next challenge is to travel to his uncle’s house and reunite with his family. The first challenge is for Alex to get out of the tangled wreckage of his bedroom and his house. Such a bizarre catastrophe was totally unanticipated. This boulder lands on Alex’s house in Iowa. A volcano in Wyoming erupts, and the force of the eruption shoots a giant chunk of rock 900 miles at supersonic speed. All is well until the unimaginable shatters his world and destroys life as Alex knows it. At 16, he’s glad to be free of parental hassles and his bratty younger sister. Together they must find the strength and skills to survive and outlast an epic disaster.Alex is celebrating his first weekend home alone. Alex begins a harrowing trek to search for his family and finds help in Darla, a travel partner he meets along the way. Then the Yellowstone super volcano erupts, plunging his hometown into a nightmare of darkness, ash, and violence.

And by some scientific measurements, it could be overdue for an eruption.įor Alex, being left alone for the weekend means having the freedom to play computer games and hang out with his friends without hassle from his mother. Many visitors to Yellowstone National Park don’t realize that the boiling hot springs and spraying geysers are caused by an underlying super volcano, so large that the caldera can only be seen by plane or satellite. 'In this chilling debut, Mullin seamlessly weaves meticulous details about science, geography, agriculture and slaughter into his prose, creating a fully immersive and internally consistent world scarily close to reality.'- Kirkus Reviews, starred review Blog Ashfall by Mike Mullin Makes the Kirkus Best Teen Books of 2011 list!