Midnight at the Electric

Anderson, Jody Lynn. Midnight at the Electric. 2017. 227p. ISBN 978-0-06-239354-8. Available at FIC AND on the library shelves.

In 2065, climate change has now irreversibly impacted Earth, and governments everywhere have pooled their resources to build a successful colony on Mars. Only a select few are sent on this one-way trip, hoping to create a new world and restore hope for humanity. Adri is one such lucky person. A teenager from Florida who lost her only family, Adri has no ties left with Earth, and is eager and ready to go. She will complete a grueling training program in Kansas, then head up to Mars with a small team. When she is informed that she will be staying with a relative during her stay in Kansas, Adri is surprised. She didn’t think she had any of them left.

Now living with her great aunt while she trains, Adri discovers a journal in the large farmhouse. In it, Catherine, a girl who lived over a hundred years ago, describes her hopes and fears during the Dust Bowl of 1934, a period that wiped many farms and towns in the middle of the country. Catherine is worried for her sister, who is sick from all the dust she has been breathing. When the Midnight Electric comes to town and promises eternal life, Catherine is desperate enough to spend money she doesn’t have and attempt it for her sister’s sake. Catherine is also intrigued by postcards her mother received decades ago, written by one of her mother’s friend, Lenore, from England.

In 1919, Lenore writes many letters to her best friend who has departed England for Kansas, relating her life and the impact that her brother’s death during World War I had on her family. Lenore describes her hopes and fears, and talks about the man she has met who lives in a run-down cottage on her family’s estate. Lenore missed her chance to immigrate with her friend, but is still hoping to travel to Kansas and be reunited.

The lives of three girls, in three distinct time periods, are about to meet through journals and postcards, showing that eternal life is indeed possible.

Told from three different points of view, each girl's journey is a product of her time, yet remains eerily similar. Fans of light mysteries and of introspective reading will appreciate how the girls' situations are deftly handled and nicely tie in together.