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.