How I Became a Teenage Survivalist

In Julie L. Casey’s post-apocalyptic novel “How I Became a Teenage Survivalist,” a solar superstorm strikes Earth. Bracken, who is fifteen years old, and his family have to learn how to live without power. Teenage Bracken is not as interested in whatever the geometry teacher might teach him as he is in the angles of a girl’s bare back taunting him from the seat in front of him.

They are forced into survival mode by the abrupt loss of power, and Bracken finds that their best chance of surviving is his seemingly boring life on a Midwest farm. Although food, drink, and heat are easily accessible, they must be used with effort.