Blizzard's Wake [Mass Market Paperback]

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 23, 2004

Kate Sterling has lost four years of her life to grief and anger. Zeke Dexter has lost four years of his life as well -- in jail for the accident that killed Kate's mother. Just out of prison, Zeke wants to put the past behind him, but a freak blizzard makes him a prisoner once again -- he of Kate, and Kate of him.

Kate fears she will never be able to overcome the anger that has consumed her since her mother's death. But is Zeke the only one Kate needs to forgive?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this taut novel set in 1941 North Dakota, Naylor (Shiloh; the Alice books) brings together a number of freak occurrences-and joins them so skillfully that her story pulses with drama. Separate narrative strands introduce Kate Sterling, a teenager still mourning the death of her mother, Ann, four years earlier, and Zeke Dexter, the drunk driver who killed Ann Sterling and who has just been released from prison a year early, for good behavior. Naylor creates a highly charged atmosphere right from the beginning, as Kate feigns an interest in high school life while secretly consumed with hatred for Zeke. When an unusually severe blizzard strikes (the storm is historical), Kate, alone at home and realizing that her father, a country doctor, and younger brother are stranded just yards away in an unheated car, resourcefully plans a rescue. Meanwhile, Zeke, lost in the blinding snowfall, has stumbled, frost-bitten, into the Sterlings' car and is being tended by Doc Sterling. Kate, who has long fantasized about making Zeke suffer, is shocked. Naylor doesn't shy away from Kate's darkest feelings (assisting her father in a makeshift operation, for example, Kate administers Zeke's ether and must resist her urge to give him too much-or too little). As unlikely as the plot sounds, the believability of the characters and the complexity of their emotions give the novel psychological truth and strong resonance to its protagonists' slow movement toward forgiveness. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From School Library Journal

Grade 5-8-Another winner from Naylor. After four years, Kate Sterling, 15, is still mourning her mother's accidental death caused by Zeke Dexter's drunk driving. She is so inconsolable that she becomes increasingly withdrawn and isolates herself from her peers. Chapters alternate between Kate's and Zeke's voices. As he returns to town after serving his prison sentence, a deadly snowstorm is approaching; simultaneously, Kate's father and brother are returning from visiting one of her dad's patients. They become stranded in the car, and she is able to rescue them before they freeze to death. Unknown to her, she is also saving Zeke, the person she hates most. The succeeding events detail her courage in dealing with her grief and with the presence of the man who killed her mother as he is given refuge in her home. The story takes place in a small, North Dakota town during the famous blizzard of March, 1941. Naylor uses dramatic but accurate details to describe the fury of the storm as well as the prewar period, thus enriching the sense of time and place. An exciting survival story interwoven with one individual's personal struggle to overcome hatred and learn to forgive.
Susan Cooley, formerly at Tower Hill School, Wilmington, DE
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Simon Pulse (March 23, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689852215
• ISBN-13: 978-0689852213
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #939,113 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I guess I've been writing for about as long as I can remember. Telling stories, anyway, if not writing them down. I had my first short story published when I was sixteen, and wrote stories to help put myself through college, planning to become a clinical psychologist. By the time I graduated with a BA degree, however, I decided that writing was really my first love, so I gave up plans for graduate school and began writing full time.

I'm not happy unless I spend some time writing every day. It's as though pressure builds up inside me, and writing even a little helps to release it. On a hard-writing day, I write about six hours. Tending to other writing business, answering mail, and just thinking about a book takes another four hours. I spend from three months to a year on a children's book, depending on how well I know the characters before I begin and how much research I need to do. A novel for adults, because it's longer, takes a year or more. When my work is going well, I wake early in the mornings, hoping it's time to get up. When the writing is hard and the words are flat, I'm not very pleasant to be around.

Getting an idea for a book is the easy part. Keeping other ideas away while I'm working on one story is what's difficult. My books are based on things that have happened to me, things I have heard or read about, all mixed up with imaginings. The best part about writing is the moment a character comes alive on paper, or when a place that existed only in my head becomes real. There are no bands playing at this moment, no audience applauding--a very solitary time, actually--but it's what I like most. I've now had more than 120 books published, and about 2000 short stories, articles and poems.

I live in Bethesda, Maryland, with my husband, Rex, a speech pathologist, who's the first person to read my manuscripts when they're finished. Our sons, Jeff and Michael, are grown now, but along with their wives and children, we often enjoy vacations together in the mountains or at the ocean. When I'm not writing, I like to hike, swim, play the piano and attend the theater.

I'm lucky to have my family, because they have contributed a great deal to my books. But I'm also lucky to have the troop of noisy, chattering characters who travel with me inside my head. As long as they are poking, prodding, demanding a place in a book, I have things to do and stories to tell.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars you won't want to stop, May 17, 2004

By 

adam baker (arkansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blizzard's Wake (Mass Market Paperback)

This book is absolutely awesome! I was on the edge of my seat not knowing what was going to happen next. If there is one book that I could suggest to you, this is it. It is suspenseful, sorrowfull, and filled with some action. When you put all three of these ingredients into a book, you got a winner, and that's what this is. Its about a family who's mom was killed by a drunk driver, Zeke Dexter. when he is released from prison after serving three of his five year sentence, the family finds Zeke at the hands of their mercy. They could kill him easily if they wanted to, or they can take him in and help him get started on his feet again. It is a book about forgiveness and finding out who you are in a time of grief and sorrow.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can Kate ever overcome her intense anger to heal?, July 27, 2003

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blizzard's Wake (Hardcover)

Teen Kate's mother died four years ago as the victim of a drunk driver, and her family has never been the same. The driver has been in jail; now he's released with a new start on life - until a blizzard brings them all together and forces them all to interact. Can Kate ever overcome her intense anger to heal? The author does an exceptional job of presenting perspectives of events from all sides in Blizzard's Wake.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awwsome., May 19, 2004

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Blizzard's Wake (Mass Market Paperback)

when i read this book, i was so captured in the moment i didn't want to stop reading it. the author does an amazing job on bringing you into the scenes. I enjoyed this book so fondly, that i'm giving a presentation on it. I am usually a hard person to get to read, but this book was outstanding!