What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
This topic is about
The Last Oasis
SOLVED: Children's/YA
>
SOLVED. YA/post apocalyptic setting, nuclear war with young boy and girl trying to survive while saving a standard orphan mutant. [s]
date
newest »
newest »
Does this sound like the same book Jessica was looking for here?https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
In case it helps anyone, I'll copy and paste Jessica's description...."I remember reading this book as a teenager 12-15 in the mid 90s. It was probably published around then. Black hardcover.
A young man, (brown hair?) is friends with a girl (dark black hair) and they live in a grim future. Rations and pollution and a military presence. Everyone hangs out at The Mall. There are gangs of children who live in The Mall and they eat really foul stuff that mutates them and turns their skin yellowish. There is one mutant girl child that has a beautiful singing voice.
The male protagonist is optimistic, kind, and idealistic. The girl with the dark black hair is pragmatic, somewhat cruel, and pessimistic. They somehow end up on a journey to look for paradise with the mutant child and they spend a lot of it on a train or maybe a boat under the care/capture of a grossly fat woman who keeps them around because of the child's singing voice. I think they do make it back to paradise just in time for the mutant girl to die there."
Think I got it!The Last Oasis
From Publishers Weekly
This debut novel takes place in a world blighted by massive environmental collapse, a world whose people are enslaved by the oppressive Government Store. In this bleak setting, Phoenix and Madonna narrowly escape arrest and exile to Denver or Japan, areas so devastated that they are uninhabitable. Together, the two teenagers make a desperate run for freedom by stowing away on a flotilla of cargo barges which they hope are heading to Idaho, the only place they know of where rain still falls and plants still grow. Along the way, both protagonists must grapple with heartbreaking conflicts between their personal honor and their pressing need to survive. Though readers will easily identify with this complex, fully realized twosome, many of the novel's secondary characters are less capably drawn and come across as somewhat flat. Nevertheless, Pace's harrowing, well-plotted SF yarn moves at breakneck speed. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
In a harsh vision of the near future, three children flee across a landscape devastated by war and toxic waste. Portland, huddled around a mall that's the only remaining source of safe water and shelter from the now-deadly sun, is one of the last remnants of civilization in the US--but rumor has it that farming of some sort is still going on in Idaho. Lured by that hope, Phoenix and Madonna evade police and stow away on a barge bound up the Snake River. On board they meet Brat, a mutilated feral child whose diet of garbage is slowly killing her. The three survive an attack by Shoshone tribesmen desperate to stop the pollution of their river and escape New Hanford, now a deathtrap due to leaking nuclear waste. Both major and minor characters are larger than life (Phoenix, a dreamer driven by the hope of peace; Madonna, surly, practical, given to wild behavior; Brat, a ruined beauty with an angelic singing voice); they move through a society marked by filth, insanity, and sexual innuendo. Almost as an afterthought, the author allows them to reach their Promised Land in the last four pages; though they aren't disappointed by their discovery, emotionally exhausted readers aren't going to find much relief. A nightmarish first novel. (Fiction. YA) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
THAT'S IT! Absolutely amazing!! Thank you so much!
What's the Name of That Book???
Books mentioned in this topic
The Last Oasis (other topics)The Last Oasis (other topics)
Young adult science fiction novel. Post apocalyptic setting, nuclear war. In the first chapter they had to use a public shower which they needed plastic coins for. The rivers were toxic. I know there were on a boat at some point and had to escape a city that the government was going to nuke because it had become out of control (not the main story, just a chapter in the book).