As she goes about town she finds a barrel with cell phones in it. Maddy wakes the next morning to learn that everyone in her town has been evacuated due to an “imminent threat”. She hears the neighbor tell the person in charge that the owners are out of state. Maddie hears sounds of panic outside of her grandma’s apartment. Unfortunately, their parents call her mom and are told she is at her dad’s so they can’t go anywhere. She goes to her grandma’s apartment and waits for her two friends to arrive. Maddie tells her mom she is staying with her dad and tells her dad she is staying with her mom to babysit.

She and two of her friends hatch a plan to spend a night at Maddie’s grandparents apartment alone. Maddie splits her time between her mom and step-dad’s house and her dad and step-mom’s house. Maddie is a typical teen living in Colorado. Can Maddie’s stubborn will to survive carry her through the most frightening experience of her life? But Maddie’s most formidable enemy is the crushing loneliness she faces every day. As months pass, she escapes natural disasters, looters, and wild animals. After a rough start, Maddie learns to trust her own ingenuity and invents clever ways to survive in a place that has been deserted and forgotten.

Her only companions are a Rottweiler named George and all the books she can read. With no one to rely on, no power, and no working phone lines or internet access, Maddie slowly learns to survive on her own. She’s alone―left behind in a town that has been mysteriously evacuated and abandoned. When twelve-year-old Maddie hatches a scheme for a secret sleepover with her two best friends, she ends up waking up to a nightmare. Perfect for fans of Hatchet and the I Survived series, this harrowing middle grade debut novel-in-verse from a Pushcart Prize–nominated poet tells the story of a young girl who wakes up one day to find herself utterly alone in her small Colorado town.

Alone megan e freeman