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The Country of Ice Cream Star

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

In the aftermath of a devastating plague, a fearless young heroine embarks on a dangerous and surprising journey to save her world in this brilliantly inventive thriller.

In the ruins of a future America, fifteen-year-old Ice Cream Star and her nomadic tribe live off the detritus of a crumbled civilization. Theirs is a world of children; before reaching the age of twenty, they all die of a strange disease they call Posies—a plague that has killed for generations. There is no medicine, no treatment; only the mysterious rumor of a cure.

When her brother begins showing signs of the disease, Ice Cream Star sets off on a bold journey to find this cure. Led by a stranger, a captured prisoner named Pasha who becomes her devoted protector and friend, Ice Cream Star plunges into the unknown, risking her freedom and ultimately her life. Traveling hundreds of miles across treacherous, unfamiliar territory, she will experience love, heartbreak, cruelty, terror, and betrayal, fighting to protect the only world she has ever known.

A postapocalyptic literary epic as imaginative as The Passage and as linguistically ambitious as Cloud Atlas, The Country of Ice Cream Star is a breathtaking work from a writer of rare and unconventional talent.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from December 22, 2014
      Newman’s latest depicts a dystopian future in which America has been decimated by “Posies,” a powerful plague that leaves few living beyond 20 years of age. Ice Cream Star, the novel’s 15-year-old narrator, is a member of the Sengles tribe of the Massa Woods, which was once Massachusetts. Ice Cream’s brother, Driver, the 18-year-old leader of the Sengles, has just begun coughing—the first telltale sign of the plague. During a standard raid of an abandoned neighborhood for left-behind supplies, Ice Cream and her fellow raiders capture Pasha, a stranger to Massa, who is a shocking 30 years old and knows a rumor about a Posies cure. Ice Cream begins her harrowing adventure to find it and save her brother—and maybe the rest of the country in the process. Written entirely in the broken English of these short-lived children, now generations removed from the plague’s onset, Newman’s novel is ambitious, taking on race, sex, class, religion, politics, and war all at once. What sets the work apart is its unapologetic narrator, whose fantastically unbridled, wholly teenage point of view renders each page a pleasure to read.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Lisa Renee Pitts narrates this postapocalyptic novel with feeling. When an epidemic wipes out most of the world, killing those over the age of 19, Ice Cream Star is left to roam a ruined American with her tribe of children The group forages for food in trash and finds anything they can use in the remains of buildings. As narrator, Pitts faces considerable challenge. Ultimately, she's unable to make clearer the author's use of incomplete sentences, nonstandard grammar, and dialogue of broken English. Listeners who can move past the dialect will find the story of children surviving at world's end engaging as Pitts's melodic voice, full of warm undertones, brings them closer to the emotional core of Ice Cream Star's struggle for survival. M.R. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

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  • English

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