Expected publication: February 25th 2014 by Putnam Juvenile
Mia Kish is afraid of the dark. And for good reason. When she was a toddler she fell deep into her backyard well only to be rescued to great fanfare and celebrity. In fact, she is small-town Fenton,Colorado’s walking claim to fame. Not like that helps her status at Westbrook Academy, the nearby uber-ritzy boarding school she attends. A townie is a townie. Being nationally ranked as a swimmer doesn’t matter a lick. But even the rarefied world of Westbrook is threated when emergency sirens start blaring and the school is put on lockdown, quarantined and surrounded by soldiers who seem to shoot first and ask questions later. Only when confronted by a frightening virus that ages its victims to death in a manner of hours does Mia realize she may only just be beginning to discover what makes Fenton special.
The answer is behind the walls of the Cave, aka Fenton Electronics. Mia’s dad, the director of Fenton Electronics, has always been secretive about his work. But unless Mia is willing to let her classmates succumb to the strange illness, she and her friends have got to break quarantine, escape the school grounds, and outsmart armed soldiers to uncover the truth about where the virus comes from and what happened down that well. The answers they find just might be more impossible than the virus they are fleeing.
The answer is behind the walls of the Cave, aka Fenton Electronics. Mia’s dad, the director of Fenton Electronics, has always been secretive about his work. But unless Mia is willing to let her classmates succumb to the strange illness, she and her friends have got to break quarantine, escape the school grounds, and outsmart armed soldiers to uncover the truth about where the virus comes from and what happened down that well. The answers they find just might be more impossible than the virus they are fleeing.
Seth Fishman
Interview:
1. Give us 3 interesting facts about you.
I'm colorblind, I can limbo very well, and I lived in England for my MFA.
2. Describe The Well's End in two sentences.
The Well's End is a YA thriller set in Colorado, where a young woman has to escape the quarantine of her uber-ritzy prep school in order to save her classmates/town/world from a terrifying and strange virus. The thing is, her father seems to know about the virus, he doesn't seem surprised, and he tells her to follow him into his mysterious place of work, dug into the mountain, called The Cave.
3. What inspired you to write this book?
I had visions of writing something about a virus, about a school where kids were SO talented it seemed unfair, and then when I connected the true story of Baby Jessica, who fell down a well in 1987 in my home town, to the main character (Mia), I knew I had a book I wanted to write.
4. You favorite scene to write and why?
There's a scene where Mia stands at the edge of an iced-over lake, in her wetsuit, shivering on the rocks and I just loved writing it. It felt like the most terrifying thing I could actually imagine someone really doing, and trying to get myself into that mindset of the character was just so challenging and fun and scary.
5. Favorite book/s you've read this year?
Ooh I read so many. Clients of mine aside, Hugh Howey's WOOL was amazing, and so was Leigh Bardugo's SHADOW & BONE. I loved the story behind Howey's books, but I also think he writes with such creative suspense I couldn't keep still. Leigh, on the other hand, was so inventive but REAL; like I totally got what it was like to be a grisha!
Giveaway Time!
Thanks to Putnam Juvenile
