Tuesday, December 3, 2024

After The Fall

 

I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the AFTER THE FALL by Ellen Parent Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!

 

About The Book:

Title: AFTER THE FALL

Author: Ellen Parent

Pub. Date: December 3, 2024

Publisher: Fitzroy Books

Formats:  Paperback, eBook, Audiobook

Pages: 266

Find it: Goodreadshttps://books2read.com/AFTER-THE-FALL-Parent

"A gripping, visceral, post-apocalyptic story brimming with adventure and heart." - Kirkus Reviews

So much is forgotten in the Republic: the way the seasons used to turn like pages in a book, the technology that once made life easy for everyone, even the art of reading. For fifteen-year-old June, the forgetting goes even deeper, ever since a mysterious accident six years ago stole her mother and her memory. When a strange circus with ties to her family comes through town, she follows them without a second thought. In the outside world, June has to navigate a landscape and society pushed to the edge by the powerful forces of climate change, and to decide who she can trust in a world where everyone seems to have secrets. Can she believe the grizzled deputy who somehow knows more about her past than she does? What about the circus performers, who push her away even as they beguile her best friend? Only when she finally uncovers a truth that threatens to change the Republic forever, will she know who her true family is— and whose life is worth saving.

 

 

Excerpt:

Two things made me finally leave the Hollow, even though I should’ve left a hundred times before. One  was seeing Jacob again, and the other was the circus.  I’d heard about the circus from Old Bill, of all people, who  spent most of his days riding a broken-down old bicycle from  place to place, begging work and being a nuisance. I came  across him when I was walking back up the hill on the day of  the storm. The squeak of his bike sounded through the woods  from a ways off, so I had time to think about hiding somewhere  till he passed. He wouldn’t hurt me, he wasn’t that kind of criminal, but he would try to talk to me, and that was almost worse. “Hey, June!” I heard before I could find a spot to hide. I kept  walking, waiting for him to catch up. We were in the poison  parsnip field and the tall dry rods of dead parsnip rose up on  either side of the path like the bars on a prison. I’d been digging  parsnip root out of the muddy dirt for dinner, trying hard not  to touch the stinging stems. Past the field, the mountains were  gray walls with a little stubble of green at their feet. The sky  overhead was gray, too, and the parsnip swayed like there might  be some weather on the way. I glanced up and saw low-bellied  clouds to the north. Ever since the double winter, it seemed  storms were coming more and more often. Like the end of the  world wasn’t hard enough already. 

The squeaking got closer and closer, and I ignored my body  itching to run. No reason to run when you’re not being chased.  Still, I wondered how Old Bill had lived this long, what with his  way of showing up when he wasn’t wanted. Finally he slowed  down beside me, his wispy gray rattail blowing in the breeze.  His bike was rusty red and he kept the tires patched with pine  pitch and his own sticky spit, probably. 

“Didn’t you hear me calling?” he gasped, stepping off the  bike and then rustling along to catch back up with me. “Hello, Bill,” I said. My teeth were tingling like they wanted  to bite. I pulled up my collar, just to make sure all my scars were  out of sight. He knew about them—everyone knew—but that  didn’t mean I liked the staring. I wished I’d worn my mom’s old  jacket, but I’d left it behind on account of the day’s warmth. Bill was wearing layers of patched sweaters with an oily  sheepskin vest on top. It wasn’t much different from what I  wore, but my clothes didn’t stink like his. I wondered if he  avoided washing just for effect. Rounded out his scummy im age nicely, I thought. He was the kind of tinker who’d clean off  your solar panels or patch your roof on a good day, but who’d  just as soon steal the tools from your shed if you didn’t give  him work. 

“Your parents up there?” he asked, eyeing me a little hungrily. He’d started looking at me differently lately, in a way that  made my hair stand up. Cyrus, whose family lived up above the  stream and who thought he was going to be my husband in a  few years, would’ve whacked Old Bill on the head for what his  eyes were doing. Cyrus didn’t know that I’d take his sister over  him any day, and neither did Old Bill. 

“Your parents need anything?” Old Bill insisted when I  didn’t answer. 

They aren’t my parents and you know it. That’s what I wanted  to say. But I wasn’t in the habit of saying what I thought. I  had secrets, things no one knew about. I didn’t ever say, I’m not gonna get married and stuck here forever, and I didn’t ever say, My  mom is coming back for me, and then we’re gonna go somewhere you folks  in the Hollow probably can’t even imagine. It was simpler not saying,  sometimes. 

“You can ask them yourself,” is what I told Old Bill. “I never seen you smile,” he said next. Just the kind of dumb  thing he’d started saying recently. 

“Well, I don’t drink like you do. What do you want me to  smile about?”

He laughed at that. “Just ’cause the world’s over don’t mean  you can’t smile!” he said. A rod of poison parsnip got stuck  in the spokes of his bike, and he stopped to get it out. I kept  walking. When he caught up, we were almost to the house. I  could see it through the broken woods—all the trees in this  spot were dead, or almost dead, since the drought and the double winter a few years back. But new stuff was growing up in  the woods—lots of kudzu, and some hardwood saplings too.  So the Hollow wasn’t done living yet. 

“You’d smile more if you saw the circus,” Old Bill said off handedly, just loud enough for me to hear. 

“What circus?” 

“Oh, you’re probably not that interested, too busy moping  around to—” 

“What circus?” I said again, louder and harder. I don’t think  this was the effect he’d intended, but it made him answer. “A new one. Jeff Quigley said he seen them in Dorset, and  they’s on a tour all the way up to Middlebury for Town Meeting.  Jeff promised they was stopping in the Borough. They got a  fire-eater and everything. I could take you, if you like.” It was always big news when something different happened  in the Republic. Oftentimes it was something bad: a new strain  of flu, a flood, another attack from the Yorkers. But every once  in a while, like this time, it was something good. There were a  couple of circuses that made the rounds in the Republic. Even  hungry folks got starved for a laugh, and they’d pay what they  could to see a show.  

The thing was, circuses almost always had more than just  tricks and juggling to offer. Sometimes they traveled with a  tinker—they deal with electricity and machines, and some  people think they’re in league with the devil. Sometimes it was  a peddler, and that’d be good news for me because peddlers  always had books to sell. But the really important thing that  traveling circuses had was news. Information from far away.  They could tell you who they’d met, and where. And that was  more important than books.

“Still got your little simpleton?” Old Bill said, looking up at  the house. 

Thomas was there by the edge of the porch, corncob pipe  clenched in his mouth. He’d only just lost his last baby teeth.  That’s funny, coming from you, I wanted to say to Old Bill, but I  didn’t say anything because sometimes keeping quiet made him  go away. Thomas watched us from the edge of the house, and  even though he didn’t move an inch, I could tell he was happy  to see me from the tilt of his head and the way his hand was  half raised, almost a wave. He must’ve heard us coming and run around from the greenhouse where Bob had him picking slugs.  I grinned up at him and he smiled back. 

“I can’t see why ol’ Bob and Denise keep taking in help that  don’t do no helping,” Bill was saying. He’d taken a white plastic  pill bottle out of his fanny pack and was trying to pry the lid  off. “The Warrens—now they only bring on orphans that can  lift fifty pounds. And they don’t have no roof falling in or slug  rot. What’s the point of an orphan that don’t work?” 

What’s the point of a dirty tramp that steals your hammer when he  says he’s going to patch the roof? I waved up at Thomas, but Bill  was still struggling with the pill bottle. I wondered if his finger  joints hurt him. 

“You need help?” I asked halfheartedly. 

“Think you’re stronger ’n me, orphan?” Bill cackled. “Damn  thing’s stuck.” 

“Here,” I said. I pulled it out of his hand and read the top  of the lid. “It says push down and turn.” I pushed the lid down  and screwed it off. The motion made something uncomfortable  flicker inside me, and I handed the bottle back quick. Memories  sometimes happened to me like that, like shadows from an  unexpected cloud. 

“Unnatural, reading,” Bill muttered, taking the pill bottle.  “Thanks kindly.” He shook a blue tab onto his palm. “LoTab  dreams tonight… You want in?”  

I stepped away quick, wrapping my hands around my bag of  parsnip roots. “I gotta go.” My voice was wary, but as I turned away I’d already forgotten Old Bill and his LoTabs—I was going to the circus, and maybe they’d have the news I was looking  for.  

The sky churned with wind and clouds above me as I walked  up the yard—I’d been right about the weather coming. The  darkening before a storm always made the world look different, like maybe you’d gotten lost and ended up somewhere you  didn’t belong. Or like you were in a dream you wanted to wake  up from. The windows of the house were dark—Denise hadn’t  lit any lamps yet—and its jumble of plastic siding and tacked on sheet metal seemed as strange as it had the first night I laid  eyes on it. The clearing was still littered with Bob’s projects  too: a yellow car with the engine pulled out, a big brush pile, a  half-built shed for the chickens. Thomas was the only change.  

I started up the steps, and Old Bill turned his bike around.  “Storm’s coming, June. Guess I’ll see you at the circus!” I didn’t answer. I climbed over the broken step and onto  the porch. I wanted to run, but instead I just made a face at  Thomas, who flicked his middle finger at Old Bill’s back.  

The rain came hard just after dinner—it was our second bad  storm in just a couple of weeks, and when the wind picked up,  we started to hear the crash of trees falling in the pine stand.  Their roots couldn’t hold up to it all, not with the dirt already  soft from the last rain.  

Bob and Denise liked to spend the start of storms in the  living room, and it wouldn’t do to say no to them. They’d taken  me in as a farmhand after I got burned in the fire and lost my  mom. I figured I owed a lot to them, and I also figured they’d  kick me out to starve or freeze to death in the storms if I got  cheeky and stopped doing what they said. But Thomas didn’t  seem to care about that stuff. Right after dinner he disappeared  up the stairs. 

Denise clicked her tongue, watching him go. Her legs had  gone swollen and red in the past months, and she didn’t walk  much anymore.

“That boy’s gone antisocial, more than usual,” Denise said.  Not to me, I thought. She didn’t understand him like I did. “He’s just scared of the storm,” I said, flipping idly through  

the pages of The Spy Craft Manual; I was waiting for my time to  bring up the circus, so I only pretended to read. 

“Storm ain’t in here yet,” Denise said, but nothing more.  Storms scared all of us, no matter how often they came.  For a little while we sat quiet, listening hard for trees falling  or worse. There’d been a landslide over across the valley last  month. I’d seen it from up in the Warrens’ high field, a big tear  cut down the mountain.  

“Old Bill says there’s a circus coming this way,” I said finally,  trying to sound casual. 

“Yep, Joe Staples reckons he saw ’em coming down from  Dorset Pass. Might be in the Borough by now, if they ain’t  caught in the rain,” Bob said, frowning down at the boot he was  resoling with a tire tread from his collection. He was wearing  overalls faded soft as lamb’s fleece. His hat had Dorr Oil printed  on it, or at least that’s what it had read before the letters started  peeling off. I told him what it said once, but he’d looked at  me like I was speaking French and said, “It’s a hat, it can’t say  nothing.” 

Now my heart skipped and I closed my lips tight to keep  from saying anything. Bob didn’t like things happening too fast.  I wanted to jump up and out into the rain and run down the  Brook Road all the way to the Borough. But I sat and laced my  fingers together.  

“Cyrus came by when you were out and dropped off a full  tin can,” Denise said to me. “One of the old ones and no sign  of mold. I need you to read it before I open it—it’s got no  pictures, and I want to know straight away whether it’s cat food  or peaches.” 

“I want to go to the circus,” I blurted out. 

“Did you hear what I said about Cyrus?” Denise said.  At the same time, Bob said, “You’re sure as heck not going  out in this weather.”

“I can go soon as the rain stops, though?” I said.  “Might need to make repairs on the greenhouse after this  wind, and I can’t do that alone,” Bob said slowly, sticking his  bone awl through the tire tread. 

“Don’t you care that your match came by here and left a  present, girl?” Denise cut in.  

“The circus might be gone if I wait.” I swallowed. Had to  lay on some sugar too, I realized. “And that’s nice Cyrus came  by. I’m sorry I missed him.” That was about as much sugar as  I had in me. 

“Why you want to see a circus anyway?” Bob asked.  “I—I want to see if they have books to trade,” I said. Better  not to complicate the matter with the real reason I wanted to  go. 

“Joe said he seen an American flag in one of their boxes  when he helped ’em cross the river down in Dorset.” Bob made  like he wanted to spit, but stopped since we were indoors. “You  don’t want to bother with that kind of folk.” 

“American?” I asked. My heart fluttered at that. If they were  American, I wanted to go even more.  

“Oh, don’t get him going,” Denise said. She sounded snippy  but a little worried too. “That circus ain’t American. Yorkers  wouldn’t be able to get a whole circus across the border without  the Green Mountain Boys noticing! Now go get that can from  the cupboard and read it, girl.” 

I went to the kitchen. The window over the sink was covered  and the cracks were stuffed, but I could still hear a drip of  water pushing through. In the other room, Denise clucked at  Bob, who was muttering something else about the Yorkers. No  one their age talked about America without getting angry. They  were bitter and afraid for the Republic, because their grand parents used to get raided by Americans back in the time just  after the Fall. But a lot of young folks were more curious than  scared of whatever was across the border, since we’d never seen  anything to make a fuss about. 

I brought the can back into the main room.

“If it’s not the Yorkers trying to steal our good soil, it’s the  New Mainers poaching our live trees for fuel. They’re scoundrels, every last American, and I’d know,” Bob was growling,  punching the awl through his shoe like it was an American too.  

“We know, Bob; they’re trouble,” Denise said, in that voice  she used when she knew he wasn’t listening to her. “Stay away from the border, the both of you,” Bob said. I  didn’t answer, and neither did Denise. Bob wasn’t talking to us,  exactly. He spoke slow and ponderous, but once he got going it  was hard stopping him. 

“I been on the other side. I been to Old York. Crossed for a  grain trade with my dad way back. And I seen horrible things,  things I won’t ever forget. People strung up like animals, kept  in cages. It’s their system, see—you break a few rules or you do  something to offend one of the governors, that’s it. There’s no  life for you except for work and dying—”  

“June, you got that can?” Denise interrupted. She was the  only one who could wrangle Bob when he got going with one  of his stories. 

“I tell you, without the Green Mountain Boys, the Republic  would be overrun.” Bob didn’t want to stop. “They’re the bravest of us, keeping our borders safe. Noble, they are. Thomas  works hard and gets strong and maybe one day he can become  a Green hisself. Bring pride to us.” 

“June?” Denise said again. 

I waited, but Bob waved a hand to say he was done. I was  glad. I got an uneasy feeling in my stomach whenever Bob  talked about wanting Thomas to be a Green Mountain Boy.  My mom hadn’t trusted the law, and neither did I. I could re 

member that much. 

“The can says mixed vegetables,” I announced. 

“Well, isn’t that nice,” Denise said loudly, letting Bob know  that the talk about America was over. “After the storm’s passed,  June, you go up to the Warrens’ and give our thanks. Enough  about this circus for tonight.” 

I’m not going up to the Warrens’. I didn’t say that.

“There’s rain coming in the kitchen,” I said instead. I put  the vegetables in Denise’s hands and left before they could say  anything else about Cyrus or tin cans or why going to the circus  was a bad idea. I’d heard enough.

 

 

About Ellen Parent:

Ellen Parent has been telling stories since the mid-nineties, when she started whispering them down to her sister on the bottom bunk. Her poetry has been published in Bloodroot, Vermont Magazine, Birchsong, and was shortlisted for the 2014 Vermont Writers Prize. After the Fall is her first novel. She lives in rural Vermont with her delightful husband, her precocious daughter, and two eccentric cats.

Website | Instagram | Goodreads | Amazon

 




Giveaway Details:

1 winner will receive a $25 Amazon Gift Card, International.

Ends December 17th, midnight EST.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Schedule:

Week One:

12/2/2024

Ogitchida Kwe’s Book Blog

Excerpt

12/2/2024

Book Review Virginia Lee Blog

Excerpt/IG Post

12/3/2024

Two Chicks on Books

Excerpt/IG Post

12/3/2024

Daily Waffle

Excerpt

12/4/2024

@callistoscalling

IG Post

12/4/2024

@mjreadsmagic

IG Post

12/5/2024

Fire and Ice Reads

Excerpt/IG Post

12/5/2024

TX Girl Reads

Excerpt/IG Post

12/6/2024

Edith's Little Free Library

IG Post/LFL Drop Pic/TikTok Post

12/6/2024

@fiction._.fuss

Review/IG Post

Week Two:

12/9/2024

@enthuse_reader

IG Review/TikTok Post

12/9/2024

@evergirl200

IG Review/TikTok Post

12/10/2024

Haney Hayes PR

Review/IG Post

12/10/2024

Kim's Book Reviews and Writing Aha's

Review/IG Post

12/11/2024

Lifestyle of Me

Review

12/11/2024

rolo_the_book_lover-

IG Review/TikTok Post

12/12/2024

Review Thick And Thin

Review/IG Post

12/12/2024

A Blue Box Full of Books

IG Review/LFL Drop Pic/TikTok Post

12/13/2024

Deal sharing aunt

Review


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