This World We Live In

Beginning with Life as We Knew It (2006), Susan Beth Pfeffer tracks the challenges and hopes of a family facing global catastrophe. After an asteroid strikes the moon, the world experiences a series of disasters that bring civilization to a halt: There is no more electricity, no more food production, and no more global communications. Sixteen-year-old Miranda Evans, of Howell, Pennsylvania, records the unfolding events in her diaries. The second book in the series, The Dead and the Gone (2008), follows a different family living in New York City. Alex Morales must take care of his two younger sisters in the aftermath; their parents are missing, and their older brother, Carlos, is stationed with the Marines in Texas. The third book, This World We Live In, brings the protagonists of the first two books together. Written in the context of growing concerns about climate change and global stability, Pfeffer’s series taps into widespread anxieties about environmental disaster and societal collapse.

Life as We Knew It describes the growing terror as the family begins to realize the extent of the damage and the irrevocable nature of this event. Millions of people are lost in the immediate aftermath, drowned by floods, incinerated in fires, or swallowed up by earthquakes. Millions more will die from the pollution that chokes the skies or the lack of medical help in the face of illness and injury or at the hands of others desperate for food and supplies. Miranda’s mother understands more quickly than most that supplies of food and other resources will rapidly run out. She and the children stock their pantry, ensuring their survival, at least in the short term.

The other concern that occupies the first book regards Miranda’s father. He is remarried to Lisa, who is expecting a baby at the time of the disaster. They leave in search of Lisa’s parents, who live on the West Coast. There is no way to communicate with them once they have left, so Miranda and Mom, along with Miranda’s brothers, Matt and Jon, must learn to fend for themselves. By the end of the book, Miranda has found the strength to take responsibility for her family—Mom has grown weak from lack of food (she has ceded her rations to her children) and illness—and discovers that City Hall is distributing food rations. By the end of Life as We Knew It, Miranda begins to feel hope amid the anxiety.

In the second book, the author follows the Morales siblings in New York City during the same timeframe. Alex must assume responsibility for his two younger sisters when it becomes clear that neither of their parents are coming home: Their father has gone to Puerto Rico, where he grew up, to visit family; the island is eventually considered lost, consumed by the rising tides. Their mother likely drowned in the subway, trying to get home to her children. Alex must engage in numerous unethical and immoral acts to keep his siblings safe and fed. In the face of environmental disaster and societal collapse, standard morality becomes obsolete and the social contract moot.

While the third book does not specifically reveal the source of Alex’s deeply corrosive guilt, The Dead and the Gone reveals that Alex feels culpable for the death of his sister Bri. He comes down with a virulent case of the flu and, as such, is unable to watch after his siblings. They nurse him back to health, but after a few days, Julie becomes worried: Bri has gone out to find more food and medicine, but she has yet to return. By the time Alex becomes well enough to search for her, she is already dead, having starved to death after becoming trapped in an elevator. This horrifying loss explains Alex’s determination to keep Julie safe and his intention never to let her suffer.

Like many other works of speculative fiction, the Last Survivors series highlights the challenges faced by the real world today, such as extreme climate change and social upheaval. It imagines the worst-case scenario and contemplates how governments and individuals alike might respond. It also humanizes the characters who confront these dire circumstances. Both Miranda and Alex are, in many ways, ordinary teenagers with familiar ambitions, both large and small. They become extraordinary—survivors of unimaginable loss and unfathomable change—in light of this world that they did not ask to inherit.