The Incident
This is a gripping story for young adult readers. The two main characters—seventeen-year-old Josh and sixteen-year-old Emma—are confronted with a major disaster that forces them to make decisions they never thought they’d have to face.
As the story begins, Josh and Emma don’t know each other. Josh is having trouble with his homework; Emma has just had a door-slamming argument with her mother. Josh is grieving for his grandfather and dog, who both died a few months ago. Emma is angry at her mom for telling her to stay home from the climate march downtown.
But soon they’re both overwhelmed by something much bigger. Josh’s climate-forecaster father has predicted a huge series of storms, called El Primo, but the storm sweeps in much faster than anyone anticipated and before anyone is ready for it. The storm topples trees, washes out roads, smashes windows and wipes out the power grid.
Suddenly, each of the teens is on their own, having to cope with the disaster and its aftermath. They confront situations neither of them has had to face before. No adults are around to help them—in fact, some adults are helpless themselves, while others are actively dangerous. With the power grid out, food and clean water become prized commodities, and looters are ready to grab whatever they can, threatening harm to anyone who tries to stop them.
And it’s not just one storm: every few hours another storm hits, doubling down on the destruction.
Josh and Emma eventually team up and begin helping each other. In a twisty story filled with menace and tension, they make mistakes but prove resilient in the face of new perils, and together they show they are capable of more than they would have thought possible.
The Incident, published in January 2022, is Avis Adams’ first novel, but she is already an award winning poet. Her poetry has appeared in literary journals and online zines such as Poetry Motel, Anderbo, and Perigee. Quilcene, her first book of poems, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019.
Until 2016, Adams was tenured faculty at Green River College in the English Division. She then retired to write full-time, though she still teaches one class. She’s a member of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association (PNWA), and has twice been a finalist in the PNWA literary contest, in the picture book and young adult categories. She lives in Washington State on a small farm near Puget Sound.
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