In a Handful of Dust

By: Mindy McGinnis

Narrated by: Allyson Ryan

Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

The only thing bigger than the world is fear.

Lucy's life by the pond has always been full. She has water and friends, laughter and the love of her adoptive mother, Lynn, who has made sure that Lucy's childhood was very different from her own. Yet it seems Lucy's future is settled already - a house, a man, children, and a water source - and anything more than life by the pond is beyond reach.

When disease burns through their community, the once life-saving water of the pond might be the source of what's killing them now. Rumors of desalinization plants in California have lingered in Lynn's mind, and the prospect of a "normal" life for Lucy sets the two of them on an epic journey west to face new dangers: hunger, mountains, deserts, betrayal, and the perils of a world so vast that Lucy fears she could be lost forever, only to disappear in a handful of dust.

In this companion to Not a Drop to Drink, Mindy McGinnis thrillingly combines the heart-swelling hope of a journey, the challenges of establishing your own place in the world, and the gripping physical danger of nature in a futuristic frontier.

©2014 Mindy McGinnis (P)2014 HarperCollins Publishers

even better than the first!

I felt this was even more well written than the first! A treasure to read. I think we all sometimes picture a character in our heads... and sometimes cast an actor for the role if a movie was made... for Fletcher I pictured Garret Dillahunt similar to his role as John Dorie in Fear the Walking Dead.

*VAGUE SPOILER WARNING*

Continuing the connections in my mind with TWD universe: Vegas reminded me a bit of Terminus... very minor comparisons came to mind of aspects of The Stand by Stephen King, Handmaids Tale By Margaret Atwood & Brave New World By Aldous Huxley.

"Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust."
T.S. Eliot, Wasteland

“‘Here is no water but only rock,’” Lynn choked out. “‘Rock and no water and the sandy road.’”
Mindy McGinnis, In a Handful of Dust a further quote from Wasteland by T.S Eliot

“They didn’t know that true Despair lives here, and she sits on a throne of broken dreams—built from all the lofty aspirations of those who tried and failed before them. I will show them fear in a handful of dust. This is how their reign ends,” I promised in a low growl. “Not with a bang, but with a whimper,”
Shayne Silvers, Black Sheep

"Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, the lady of situations. Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, and here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, which is blank, is something he carries on his back which I am forbidden to see. I do not find The Hanged Man. Fear death by water"
Wasteland by T.S. Elliot quoted in
Swan Song by Robert McCammon

"first the smiles, then the lies. Last comes gunfire."
Stephen King

"and so will the world end,
I think, a victim of love rather than hate. For love’s ever been the more destructive weapon, sure."
Stephen King

"Love opened a mortal wound.
In agony, I worked the blade
to make it deeper. Please,
I begged, let death come quick.
Wild, distracted, sick,
I counted, counted
all the ways love hurt me.
One life, I thought--a thousand deaths"
Love Opened a Mortal Wound, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

"Hate isn’t the most dangerous thing, he’d said. Indifference is."
Delirium, Lauren Oliver

"Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice."
Robert Frost

"'Do'ee say the world will end in fire or in ice, gunslinger?' Roland considered this. "Neither",he said at last. 'I think in darkness'"
Stephen King

"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper"
Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot

"Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,
By Dylan Thomas

*THE QUOTES TO FOLLOW MAY ALSO CONTAIN SPOILERS*

"Only her pupils could convey the panic as her lungs collapsed."
Mindy McGinnis, In a Handful of Dust

"A rattle chased Maddy’s last breath out of her throat as Lucy held her friend’s hand."

"Not an easy night for the living.”

"True enough, there’s those that go that way. But in the silence you know they’ve gone. Something is missing.”

"Lucy let out the breath she’d been holding along with the woman next to her and nodded, any worries she had for herself only small drops on the wave of worry that had crashed over her"

" 'So she got it from somebody else? But who else is sick?' Lucy asked.
And the first knock on the door came."

"the healthy came carrying the sick, and the sick carrying the virus."

"Most were dying even as Lucy settled them onto the ground, the eerie rattle that she had first heard from Maddy now filling her ears like the sound of cicadas."

" 'That sucks.'
'Maybe,' Lynn said as she took the kindling from Lucy. 'Maybe those that get sick are just happy to have it done, no matter how it ends. Like when Poe said,

“The sickness—the nausea—
The pitiless pain—
Have ceased, with the fever
That maddened my brain—
With the fever called ‘Living’
That burned in my brain.” ' "
Mindy McGinnis, In a Handful of Dust

“Kiddo, you and me don’t do so well in situations we can’t control."
Mindy McGinnis, Not a Drop to Drink

" 'you said you and me aren’t the kind of people who don’t like situations we can’t control. You said we need to be able to do something.'
'I remember.'
'I think it’s time we did something.' ”
Mindy McGinnis, Not a Drop to Drink

" 'He told me once that people like me and him are badly built for times like this, when there’s nothing we can do.'
'You need an enemy,' Lucy said, understanding immediately.
'I do. And when it’s a sickness, I guess the best weapon I’ve got is the fire for the bodies.' "
Mindy McGinnis, In a Handful of Dust

"The three adults looked at one another for a moment, the weight of their silence resting on Lucy’s heart more heavily than any words."

"her heartbeat a dim echo inside her body."

"The specter of suicide, the death her own mother had chosen, wasn’t a stranger in their bleak world."

"touching her chest as if the continued beating of her heart stood in denial."

"If Lynn, who was faithless, had faith in her, it was all the validation she needed."

"She’s got a mother’s instincts without ever having borne a child"

“ 'Sounds like heaven.'
'It could be,' Lucy said. 'But getting there’ll be hell.' "

"The only thing bigger than the world is fear"

"They looked at each other across the void they could not bridge, their silent, saltwater good-byes streaming down their faces."

"Entargo was a faint memory, darkly steeped in her father’s blood"

"Somehow the ocean had begun to pull on her, as real as the tide itself."

"as if her past were slipping, ghost-like, through the forest."

"Lucy found the words from her past flowing, offering a distraction to which she gladly succumbed. Sharing an old hurt, long scarred over, was easier than the pains of the present."

"Just a bunch of strangers trying to keep each other safe on the road. I’ve got no place to go. I’m waiting for it to find me."

"Most people these days, it takes all their time just to make sure they live. Before, we threw ourselves into actually living.”
Mindy McGinnis, In a Handful of Dust

" 'He might die.'
'He will, but before that comes to pass it would gladen my heart to see him live.' "
Star Trek Picard

"Used to be we were raised on dreams. Now we tell the kids they’re lucky to be alive"
Mindy McGinnis, In a Handful of Dust

"the burn of injury faded to the itch of healing before they crossed into Illinois."

"The feeling of hope that blossomed was always stifled by the midday heat, and the heavy air made breathing feel like work.
The heat was their enemy as much as the men with guns had been."

"They were inoculated from the virus, but not the guns of strangers."

"nodding toward the skeletal form of the bridge, looming in the distant haze. 'I keep riding and hoping fate doesn’t feel like being an ironic bitch today.' ”

"The sheer terror of something so large existing in the world she had thrown herself into only made her own smallness more apparent, the very fact that she was alive meaningless to anyone besides herself."

"Looking at the endless road under the limitless sky drove a spike into Lucy’s heart. She didn’t matter out here. At home she’d been loved by a few, and known by many. Away from there she could easily drown in a river, or lie down to die quietly in the waving grass, and no one would care. She’d be swallowed by the earth as easily as the rain."

"But that’s life, little one—lots of little maybes and what ifs all lined up in a row. And if you put your mind to following some of them that never came about, you’ll get lost and not find your way back to the way it really is.”

"Lucy watched as the wind ran its fingers through Lynn’s loose hair"

"In a world like this, you pay it forward, ’cause more than likely you didn’t deserve it when you got it the first time.”

"Family is made all kinds of ways, especially now,”

"the tie between their eyes was so strong, it was nearly palpable."

"Lynn didn’t want to believe in Fletcher’s talk of karma. While he might be doing good for strangers in the hope fate would be kind to his lost wife, Lynn’s own past was littered with bodies. And she was always on the lookout for whoever was coming to collect the debt."

"I’ve had a lot of things on this journey of mine that are lost now."

"Because I’ve learned a lesson, and more than once. If you have something, someone will take it from you, and with the loss comes suffering. It’s best to be beholden to nothing.”

"Hope chased the panic through her body, making Lucy dizzy."

"Lucy’s heart never knew whether to be elated at their progress or dismayed as the continuous battle between what if and I can’t raged."

"Her own thoughts roamed along with her mount, as if discovering the moment in time she had lost her courage might help her reclaim it."

"the seed of fear had been planted inside of her. And it had grown, filling all her corners and finding an answering echo in the dark line of the mountains."
Mindy McGinnis, In a Handful of Dust

“Frightened people live in their own special hell. You could say they make it themselves, but they can’t help it. It’s the way they’re built. They deserve sympathy and compassion.”
Stephen King, Revival

"We crossed paths and it was simply serendipity. The chances of finding someone you can truly love were small, even before this dark and broken time of ours. What are the odds two people left in this vast emptiness would find each other and be soul mates?”
Mindy McGinnis, In a Handful of Dust

"Those who reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”

"Long after Fletcher had drifted off, Lucy stared into the mesmerizing comfort of the flames."

"The mountains had frightened Lucy with their vastness; their towering heights had persevered for thousands of years, reminding her she was a breath on the wind. The desert made her feel like even that breath was stolen, and the dust filling her lungs taunted her with the reality that one day she’d be reduced to the same."

"The only thing that broke the view was the marching electrical poles, skeletons from a different world whose veins had been emptied of their power long ago."

"the hot blood releasing from her head to mix with the cold flow of rainwater."

“This isn’t fair,” she managed to say weakly as she slipped into unconsciousness, knowing she was about to drown in a place where little water could be found."
In a Handful of Dust by Mindy McGinnis

"It was not fair, it was not fair, it was not fair. So cried his child's heart, and then his child's heart died a little. For that is also the way of the world."
Stephen King, The Wind Through the Keyhole

"the pain standing out like a sharp moment in time."
Mindy McGinnis, In a Handful of Dust

"Darkness came again, calling with a comforting numbness she knew had little to do with the cold water."

"Lucy thought of Neva, and the living death that had been in her eyes years before she put a pistol to her head."

"She had lived rough her whole life, but hunger had never been a true enemy"

"In the overwhelming burn of a desert day, she understood the difference between hunger and starvation"

"hope had bloomed in Lucy like the desert flowers around them, subsisting on nothing more than heat and dust."

“She’ll be fine,” Lucy said. “She’s too proud to die.”
Mindy McGinnis, In a Handful of Dust

"So proud you live, so proud you die"
Indian Nation, Paul Revere and the Raiders

"a common enemy makes for fast friends."
Mindy McGinnis, In a Handful of Dust

"Lucy did not sleep well. Dreams filled with bloodied sand and dark drops on black pavement kept bringing her back to consciousness to take deep breaths of the fetid hotel air."

"Lucy’s clothes from the road were so choked with bad memories she couldn’t believe the threadbare fabric could hold up under the weight."

"Nora wiped Lynn’s blood from Lucy’s hands while tears and truth flowed from Lucy in an unbridled wave."

“Those aren’t the kinds of books you read to pass the time, little one. What’s in those books keeps me sleepless, like you.”

"Nora sat on the floor across from Lucy for days, showing her how to navigate the huge books and pull the streams of information from them. They were piled all around the two of them like a paper fort, the words protecting them from the many-faced specter of illnesses"

"As the days crept by, Lucy felt as if her emptiness was growing to fill all her corners, leaving room for nothing else. Worry and fear slipped away, anger and happiness following shortly thereafter. Even Ben’s ill attempts at humor could not grate on nerves that didn’t exist anymore, and Lucy floated in a cloud of nothing as the cooler breezes of fall played with the short ends of her hair"

"Lynn drove quickly; Lucy watched her eyes darting back and forth in the rearview mirror, not relaxing until they were well beyond the pale fingers of the dead buildings that reached for the sky."

" 'It stuck with you though. The words meant for us can do that, stick to the crevices inside and come out when we least expect it. Why those words?'
Lucy dug deep to find her own words, new ones that tasted like hope and not the misery of the road '“The desert and the mountains and the plains all felt like they were in my way, stopping me from getting to somewhere I was supposed to be.' "

"a deep hole of fear she’d thought she’d left behind her opening inside her gut again."

"And Lucy cried as the tide came in, her salty tears making the ocean bigger."

Excellent

This is one of the best science fiction climate change we have ever listened to. It is excellent on all accounts.

Dystopian Dystopian

Yet another dystopian future in which people have inexplicably become too stupid to live. I like the dystopian genre, but Sturgeon’s Law definitely applies. Good dystopian novels present an interesting world which makes sense then the writing transcend the dystopian environment. This book does none of this. It is kind of like The Road, but with a childish story and childish characters, no drama, and no tension and a silly coming of age underpinning. The cause of this dystopia is unclear, simply called the trouble, or the shortages. The premise seems to be, for unexplained reasons, water is scarce and precious. Yet, there seems to be water everywhere. Ponds, lakes, streams, springs, rivers, the mighty Mississippi, the wide Missouri, and dowsing works great. As they walk from Ohio to California they find more water every few hours. The only reason they become thirsty seems to be they leave the water, spill their water, or have such small bottles they can’t make it to the next spring (yet they do anyways). Indeed they find enough water for themselves and their troop of horses. When it rains the people put out buckets or bottles, which don’t gather much and sometimes fall over. Somehow I would make a funnel or tarp rain catcher or at least secure my bottle from falling over. The only way to carry water seems to be in small plastic bottles. I kept thinking, the point of the story must be Darwin is going to take these protagonists out for the good of the species. Yet finally they wander into the desert (seems like a good idea), and the dystopian water shortage becomes truly ridiculous, with ridiculous water conservation techniques. Then they get to California and the dystopia magically vanishes.

I did not care much for the narration. I found the voice clear, but both breathy and grating, and the male characterization weak.

I only kept listening to this book because someone I respected said I would really like this book. I wondered what I had done to this person to deserve this awful recommendation. While writing this review I came to realize they were recommending “A Handful of Dust” which I will now add to my list.

3.5 star

Not as good as the first but, still worth the read to get the conclusion.