48 Hour Book Challenge, Book 4: A Small Free Kiss In The Dark by Glenda Millard

Imagine if Cormac McCarthy wrote The Road and made it hopeful.  Okay, I know, that's not what Cormac McCarthy would do, but it's sort of what Glenda Millard does in A Small Free Kiss In The Dark.  Skip's a teenager who never quite found what he was looking for via the foster care system.  He's homeless, but he gets by, spending time in the library and creating chalk art.  Until something very not beautiful happens.  His dingy city world, a world he still saw the beauty in, becomes war-torn.  Buildings are blowing up, people are dead in the street, or cowered in what's left of the library, trying to figure out what to do next.  His world is a war-zone.  And nobody knows what to do.

With an older homeless man, Billy, and a kid named Max, whose mother never made it to pick him up from the library, Skip leaves the city, venturing through the underground tunnels where the trains used to run, and finds a new home, in an abandoned amusement park.  Thinking the tanks and bombs won't come for them there, Skip, Billy, Max, and a beautiful ballerina/teenage mother Tia and her baby make their home there, carving out an existence in a place that's supposed to inspire hope and doing the best they can to survive.

Millard crafts a gripping story in an unreal setting, at least for this country.  As much as this is not a story about the apocalypse, the setting nevertheless feels like it, with no one aware of what is happening, except the fact that everything has changed.  Gorgeous, evocative writing, and a hopeful, thoughtful protagonist make this story both memorable and powerful.