User:MiaSutton/After the Snow

= After the Snow = After the Snow is a young adult dystopian novel written by S.D. Crockett. Set in a near-future Ice Age, the first-person narrative follows 15 year-old Willo shortly after his family's disappearance. The novel focuses on issues of survival, isolation, humanity, storytelling, and above all, coming of age. It was published by Feiwel and Friends in 2012 and republished in 2013 by Square Fish, an imprint of Macmillan. It is the first of two volumes in the series by the same name, followed in 2013 by the prequel One Crow Alone.

Background
Willo’s lives in the aftermath of an ice age brought on by global warming. Melt water from the poles mixed with and slowing warm currents. The oceans stopped moving, and in 2059, the snow started to fall without end. The narrative occurs a generation after the ice age began. Willo’s father remembers life before the ice Age began but Willo himself only knows the world after the snow. The novel is set in post-apocalyptic England, located by reference to cities such as London and Manchester.

Part I: Snowdonia
When Willo’s family disappears, he suspects that their neighbour, Geraint, was involved. He leaves his home behind with plans of revenge. With the snow quickly covering the tracks of the truck that took his family away, he resolves to do whatever it takes to survive on his own.

Willo comes across an old house, hoping to find adults with food he can trade for some of his supplies. Instead, he finds Mary and her brother Tommy. Despite intending to leave them behind, Willo returns with food only to find that Tommy is dead. Unable to leave Mary to die, he decides to take her to the power lines, where she can get on a government truck to the city.

As they get closer to the power lines, Willo and Mary are chased by a pack of cannibalistic Stealers. They are saved by Moira, a government truck driver, who shoots the Stealer at their heels and tells them to get in the back of the truck. The rest of the government convoy catches up before Willo has a chance to slip away and he is forced to hide in the truck as it passes through the checkpoint and into the city.

Part II: The City
Willo is overwhelmed and out of his element when they arrive in the city. Mary finds them food and shelter with Vincent, a friend of her father. Willo leaves Mary during the night, only to be jumped by a gang, losing his gloves and coat. Cath, a member of the gang returns with Willo’s coat, expecting him to sell it so she can buy alcohol. When he refuses, she leaves him with the coat.

Willo then meets Jacob, an old man who admires the construction of his coat and invites Willo into his home. In exchange for food and shelter, Willo helps Jacob and his wife, Elizabeth, make a coat for a wealthy and important woman, Dorothy Bek-Murzin. Jacob sells the coat to her for 1000 yuan (equivalent to over 3000 pounds) and buys government papers for Willo with the earnings.

Part III: The Melt
Jacob gives Willo a tin of money for his work on the coat and explains that Dorothy is eager for him to make more clothes for him, such as gloves and lined boots. She has Willo accompany her to the bathhouse. She explains that she’s being watched closely and he needs to leave the city. They are joined by a man named Callum Gourty, disguised as a furrier. From listening to their conversation, Willo realizes that his father, known to him as Robin Blake, is actually John Blovyn, the author of In Search Of An Ark. The text is seen as a bible or call-to-action against the government’s control, making Willo’s father the figurehead of a resistance.

Soldiers storm the room along with Patrick, who had lived with Willo’s family since the spring. Patrick interrogates Willo and reveals that his father’s last moments had been in the same cell, with the rest of the family dead in front of him. Patrick kills Dorothy in front of Willo and has him thrown into a truck with Callum. Callum tells him to escape and go to the beach so he can get on the boat, the ark of his father's book. Before he dies, Callum instructs Willo to find his daughter and take her with him.

Using a blade hidden in Callum’s shoe, Willo cuts himself free and jumps off the truck. He makes his way to the beach and finds Mary, realizing that she is Callum’s daughter. He explains that he is John Blovyn’s son and tells Mary that her father is dead. Chased by melt waters, they run toward the beach. As the boat comes into view, though, Willo realizes that they don’t need the boat or the island; they need to stay together. They decide to head south instead, to start over on their own and become beacons of hope.

Willo Blake
15 year-old Willo is the protagonist of the novel, which follows his search for his family after they mysteriously disappear. Throughout his journey, Willo reflects on his upbringing, recalling clashes with his father on what matters and how to live. Before his family's disappearance, Willo traps animals for skins they can sell and use to make coats.

The Dog
The Dog is the voice of the dog skull Willo wears on his head. In early chapters, Willo has conversations with the Dog, whose voice appears in italics and is framed as a voice of reason, encouraging Willo to do what it takes to survive, to think like an animal, and to be smart and careful. The Dog’s voice disappears after Willo decides not to leave Mary behind. The Dog reappears after Willo leaves Mary in the settlement, encouraging his decision to look after himself. At the end of the novel, Willo realizes that it had been his own voice in his head all along, not the Dog’s.

Mary
13 year old Mary is taken in by Willo after her father leaves in search of food for her and her brother Tommy. While Mary lacks the skills to survive in the wilderness, Willo depends on her when they reach the settlement, where he is overwhelmed and out of his element. Mary is revealed to be Callum Gourty's daughter, a relationship which is hinted at throughout the novel.

Robin Blake / John Blovyn
Introduced as Robin Blake, Willo's father is revealed to be John Blovyn, author of In Search of an Ark. The text is viewed as a bible or call-to-arms found in the possession of members of a resistance against the government. He is revealed to be dead at the end of the novel, having been betrayed by Patrick.

Geraint
Geraint lives near Willo’s family and has a child with Willo’s sister, Alice. She was 14 when she became pregnant with the much older “greybeard.” Geraint’s government papers and licence to sell and trade makes Willo’s family reliant on him to sell their skins and goods. Willo suspects that Geraint is involved in his family’s disappearance even before he overhears Geraint breaking into their house and stealing his father’s tools. Willo learns from Patrick that Geraint was not responsible, and that he and Alice are on a convoy to China.

Patrick
Patrick had lived with Willo’s family since the previous spring, having begged for shelter. Willo recalls that Patrick said he had come from the power plant but didn’t speak about his past. It is revealed later that Patrick was spying on Willo’s father the whole time and was responsible for his family’s disappearance and deaths.

Vince
Vince is a friend of Mary’s father. When Mary and Willo arrive in the city, she finds him in The King Will Beerhouse and he provides them with food for free. He asks Mary if she has a message from her father and tells her to pass on the message that the moths are on the wing, a reference to John Blovyn’s In Search of an Ark, a call-to-action held to be a bible by members of a resistance against the government.

Callum Gourty
Callum Gourty is a member of the same resistance as Willo’s father and a friend of Dorothy. He is also Mary and Tommy’s father, which is hinted at early in the novel. Soon after Willo meets Mary, she describes “the woman” as always telling her father, “Callum, I want to go home.” When Willo and Mary speak to Vince, he tells Mary to tell her father that the moths are on the wing, a phrase which is later echoed by Callum. Their relationship is also suggested when Callum tells Dorothy that he lost his son but found his daughter alive in the settlement. He dies immediately after instructing Willo to escape and find his daughter.

Style
The novel is written from the first person point of view. The narration takes on Willo’s voice and dialect. The broken grammar and syntax, using words like “gonna,” “aint,” and “cos” within choppy, fragmented sentences, have had mixed reception. Crockett explains that the novel is about Willo finding his voice and that the use of dialect reflects his perspective. The narration uses very little past and future tense because Willo is focused on, thinks in, and speaks in the present tense.

Awards and nominations
After the Snow was a finalist for the American Library Association's William C. Morris Debut Award for young adult fiction. Kirkus Reviews included the novel in its Best Teen Books of 2012. It was also a New York Times Editor's Choice.