Part of Series
They are not alone. After most of the world's population was wiped out by a deadly plague five years ago, this small group of children formed a family. They've taken care of each other, scavenging food from deserted supermarkets, fighting off the wild animals that prowl soccer fields and schools. The children thought they were the only ones left. Then they came across the Keepers, the first Grown-ups they'd seen for years, living in an abandoned shopping mall. The Keepers offered fresh food, clean beds, and security. But what looked like safety was instead the worst danger the family had yet faced. Now the family is once again on the road. But if they want to reach the end of their journey, if they want to solve the mystery of what happened and who is to blame, they must head straight into danger—to Pisgah, the heart of the Keepers' power. In this stunning conclusion to the Fire-us Trilogy, Jennifer Armstrong and Nancy Butcher return to the post-apocalyptic world they created in "The Kindling" and "The Keepers of the Flame," as the family discovers the dark secret that changed their world forever.
Author
Jennifer Armstrong learned to read and write in Switzerland, in a small school for English speaking children on the shores of Lake Zurich. The school library had no librarian and no catalog – just shelves of interesting books. She selected books on her own, read what she could, and made up the rest. It was perfect. As a result, she made her career choice – to become an author – in first grade. When she and her family returned to the U.S. she discovered that not all children wrote stories and read books, and that not all teachers thought reading real books was important. Nevertheless, she was undaunted. Within a year of leaving college she was a free-lance ghost writer for a popular juvenile book series, and before long published her first trade novel, Steal Away, which won her a Golden Kite Honor for fiction. More than fifty additional novels and picture books followed, and before long she also tried her hand at nonfiction, winning an Orbis Pictus Award and a Horn Book Honor for her first nonfiction book, Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World. In late 2003 she will travel to the South Pole with the National Science Foundation to do research for a book on ice.
