Snowflake, AZ

Written by Marcus Sedgwick

Narrated by M.W. Cartozian Wilson

From Printz medalist Marcus Sedgwick, a gripping novel about health?our own and our planet's?and the stigma of illness. Ash boards a Greyhound bus heading to the place where Bly was last seen: Snowflake, Arizona. Six thousand feet up in the wide red desert, Ash meets Mona, her dog, her goat, and her neighbors, and finds stepbrother Bly, too. In their ramshackle homes, the walls lined with tinfoil, almost all the residents of Snowflake are sick. But this isn't any ordinary sickness: the chemicals and technologies of modern life are poisoning them. They call themselves canaries, living warning signs that humans have pushed the environment too far, except no one seems to be taking their warnings seriously. The healthy "normies" of Snowflake have written them off as a bunch of eccentrics, and when Ash too falls ill, the doctor's response is "It's all in your mind." Snowflake, AZ contemplates illness and health?both our own and our planet's. As Ash lives through a cycle of illness and recovery and loss, the world beyond is succumbing to its own affliction: a breakdown of civilization only distantly perceived by Ash and the isolated residents of Snowflake, from which there may or may not be a chance for recovery. This provocative novel by one of our most admired storytellers explores the resilience of love and community in the face of crisis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781980053682

Marcus Sedgwick

Marcus Sedgwick was one of this generation’s most lauded and highly regarded writers for children and young people, having published over forty books including acclaimed Midwinterblood and The Monsters We Deserve. He won multiple prestigious awards, most notably the Michael L. Printz Award, the Branford Boase Award, the BookTrust Teenage Prize and the Blue Peter Book Award.

Reviews for Snowflake, AZ

[fromthecomfychair · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I want to do this book justice. The reviews I have read elsewhere are very mixed. I have to say I was intrigued by the ideas about health and illness, and the role environment plays in those.Our main character is Ash, who comes to Snowflake, AZ (a real place) in search of his stepbrother, Bly, who was supposed to be training at a policy academy but has unaccountably disappeared from there and is living in Snowflake. What Ash finds when he gets off the Greyhound bus is an isolated community of people suffering from environmental illnesses (EI). Bly has become ill, and joined this community. Shortly after arriving, Ash himself becomes ill, and learns what it is to live with a mysterious illness that the outside world thinks is all in his head. He spends months, which turn into years, unable to walk more than 1/2 mile or stand on his feet for more than an hour, because it just makes him weary and sick. The other residents take him in and help him care for himself. They are quite an interesting group including a philosophy professor and an immunologist. An important thing to know is that the author himself suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome, and learned about this community before he wrote the book. The book is written in the form of a memoir, with Ash looking back on his life from a future where something terrible has happened to the entire planet, but that something is never spelled out. He tells us that the world was living on top of a volcano, but maybe that was metaphorical. Maybe Sedgwick is suggesting that the people of Snowflake were the "canaries in the coal mine" who were experiencing what was to come for the rest of civilization. I find the way Ash speaks to suggest he is from some backwoods, unschooled society, but that is not the case. I don't understand why Sedgwick gave him this sort of voice, or why at least one of the characters, Mona, a former college professor, seems to speak in this way also. It's interesting to me that Sedgwick's books have been marketed as YA. In this case, there is a narrator, Ash, who is a teen when the story begins, but the story is really geared to an older teen and definitely for adults. Also, the book cover is really unappealing and off-putting. As a former HS librarian, I know that covers like these, with a picture of a plain house in the desert, do not fly off the shelves. Do book designers actually read the books they design covers for? There were so many elements that could have been used to sell the book--pictures of people wearing hospital masks, standing in the desert, would have been far more effective. All in all, I liked and was intrigued by the ideas in the book, and Sedgwick is really good at creating atmosphere. But it's not a five for me.