Beyond the Burning Lands by John Christopher

And, of course, Grandpa and Grandma had not been there. Not a motorway, but the A21, a few miles south of the Tonbridge bypass. Not a sunny morning, but a dull rain-bleared afternoon.

It had been full of inaccuracies and impossibilities, the way dreams were. Neil thought about the dream later that day, as he walked across the churchyard on his way to catch the bus to school. Then screams, and blackness, and he woke up sweating, his fingers digging into the bed clothes that were wrapped tightly round him. He was relaxing in the enjoyment of that, too-it not mattering-when he heard his mother’s small gasping cry and looked up to see it: the monstrous hulk of the heavy lorry and trailer jack-knifing across the road in front of them, looming up and up. . . . He could not decide, but it did not matter. It being end of term, the try he had scored in the junior House final, the prospect of summer and the cricket season ahead? Or perhaps just this journey. He tried to work out what had given rise to it, but could not. Neil himself was silent, engrossed in a strange but satisfying feeling of well-being. Grandpa and Grandma were admiring the countryside, he pointing out a view that attracted him and she agreeing. Amanda and Andy were arguing, but amiably, about a pop programme they had watched on TV. While Neil’s father drove, his mother was telling him something about a dance at the golf club.

T HEY WERE DRIVING ALONG THE motorway on a bright sunny morning, everyone happy. In this time of strife, amid the excitement and loneliness of his solitude, can Neil find a way to focus on what matters most? Read more There he finds a strange world of fear and suspicion, where friends can be enemies and people will do anything to survive. The sickness is a strange one, affecting only the adults and none of the children, and soon Neil finds himself an orphan once more.Īlone, Neil travels to London in search of other survivors of the plague. After killing thousands of people in India in just a few months, the disease begins to spread much farther, quickly sweeping across the world and eventually settling in the same village where Neil resides. Soon, a devastating illness, the Calcutta Plague, begins making the headlines. He is sent to live in a small village with his grandparents, whom he loves but doesn’t really know.

Neil’s world is shattered when he and his family are involved in a horrible car accident that leaves him an orphan. When Neil survives a deadly plague and plunges into solitude, he must question everything in this gripping adventure from critically acclaimed Tripods author John Christopher.

Beyond the Burning Lands by John Christopher