Midnight at the Electric

Reviewed by: Sheila Dube - Springvale Public Library, Springvale, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: January 8, 2018

Review

Recommending for Cream Consideration. It is 2065 and as sixteen-year-old Adri Ortiz prepares for her coveted place on the mission to populate Mars, she must make connections and stay with her only documented family member in Kansas during this last portion of her training. Lily, her 107 year old distant cousin, opens her home and unknowingly provides Adri with a mystery of familial connections through the letters and experiences of Catherine during the 1934 dust bowl and Lenore in England during the early 1900's. Catherine is desperate to find a way to save her younger sister from suffocating dust and Lenore must balance the need for friendship with loyalty during World War I. Each character and the hopeless they overcome and difficulties that they face are fleshed out in alternating chapters that slowly untie the stories into the linear connection that binds them all together with one long living Galapagos tortoise that resides at Lily's farm. Anderson provides readers with a vast array of settings, social constructs and decisions of the heart in a succinct writing style that lingers long after the last page is read.

Overall Book Score: excellent