The Dark Side of the Moon

A school assignment to write three different papers on the moon is no picnic. Why is it, Miranda wonders, that teachers all manage to make things due on the same day? A meteor hitting the moon is an event that spans every class she’s in, and every teacher wants to talk about it. It’s an American event, it seems, and Miranda, in her typical American family, is out on the lawn with the rest of the neighborhood, watching the show. It's just another night in Suburbia, Miranda thinks.

Nobody, however, is truly prepared for this event.

First, the meteor is bigger than everybody thought. Second, knocks the moon out of orbit. Third, it triggers a series of storms and tsunamis.

It’s not done yet.

Miranda and her brothers think their mother is nuts for running to the grocery store and filling their pantry and basement with food, but when the power flickers off and on and …off, Miranda isn’t so sure that Life As We Knew It will ever be the same…

Susan Beth Pfeffer creates one of the most stark, chilling, environmental disaster stories I’ve ever read. Miranda’s journals provide evidence of the emotional roller coaster of the survivors, the behavior of large groups of people due to human nature, the little cruelties and kindnesses. This frightening tale will make you want to pack up your garage with vitamins and foodstuff and make a run to a big-box retailer for batteries enough for the next fifteen years.

Meanwhile, the Sci-Fi Channel reports that Pfeffer has completed a companion novel to this chilling book titled, The Dead and the Gone.