Left Behind, or Gone for Good? Under the Dome, or Survival of the Flies?

Kasey Cox



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Readers across the spectrum enjoy survival stories, although a lot of bibliophiles may not even realize how many books they read that carry a strong survival theme. Without a doubt, certain survival stories are obvious, in part because they are the true accounts of people in extreme situations: tales of trapped rock climbers (Between a Rock and a Hard Place); escaping alive from one of the worst disasters on Mount Everest (Into Thin Air); young boys climbing down a frozen mountain after a plane crash above the treeline (Crazy for the Storm).

Even if extreme mountaineering isn’t the chosen subject, certainly history remains one of the most popular genres of books, and most history books include stories of our ancestors surviving any number of terrible hardships: soldiers who made it through plane crashes, shark-infested waters, and POW camps (Unbroken); the rigors of settling the American prairie (Little House on the Prairie); the grueling, soul-crushing effort of the Civil War (Cold Mountain); the terrors and triumphs of living through a ‘Day of Infamy’ and other dark days in American history (I Survived Pearl Harbor; I Survived Hurricane Katrina).

In addition to the myriad of true stories – in biography, history, nature writing, travel writing, and more – there is an equally large amount of fiction which allows the reader to wrestle, alongside the characters, with how he or she might behave in a difficult situation. In fiction, the reader can ‘watch’ how characters respond to tragedy, extreme change, hunger, violence, and other threats. We, as readers, often find ourselves ‘sucked in’ to a story because we identify with certain characters. We see ourselves there; we wonder how we would respond.

Michael Grant’s young adult series, the “Gone” novels, puts characters in all kinds of dramatic survival situations. Kids are suddenly forced into a world that is at once the same place they’ve always been and also completely, frighteningly changed. One morning in late fall, in a little town on the coast of California, in the blink of an eye, everyone over the age of 15 disappears.

To make matters worse, as the kids explore, they find a ‘barrier’ – electric to the touch – which extends all the way around their area, 20 miles in any direction from the nuclear power plant just outside the main streets of little Perdido Beach.

With this first book, it’s like Stephen King’s Under the Dome meets Tim LaHaye’s “Left Behind” series. Now add in a big dose of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, since certain kids step up to try to take on the adult responsibilities – such as caring for the youngest children, and doing first aid – while other kids relish the chance to bully those more scared or weak than they. Then ramp up the excitement by throwing in some of the “X-men”, as kids begin to develop strange powers, and animals begin to mutate in scary, dangerous ways. With the “Gone” series, Michael Grant has created a fantastic recipe for compelling, stay-up-late-for-just-one-more-chapter reading.