A Plague Year

A Plague Year had so much potential to be a powerful realistic story of a poor mining town destroyed by meth. I was hoping for a rural YA version of the must read classic David Simon book The Corner. (The book that became the basis of the HBO series The Wire.) Instead it is another disappointment from one of my favorite YA authors. The destruction of families is mentioned only superficially in a couple of conversations. The neglect and abuse of children by their addict parents is absent completely. Most of the book focuses on 15 year old Tom, a hard working ambitious town native anxious to escape via college. Tom is an unreliable narrator. Since he spends most of his time either working or studying, he is oblivious to the troubles of his friends and classmates. There are many references to townspeople turning into zombies, but since Tom has no relationship with any of these people, they are not a focal point of the events. The school support group for students dealing with addiction problems could have been an intense setting for the characters to come together, reveal their fears and pain, and connect. Instead, the group meetings come off as preachy. It was bizarre that the town police department ignores the meth problem, but goes out of its way to nail pot smokers and small time pot dealers. It was also odd that even after Tom becomes suspicious that some of his father's employees are addicts, he never says anything to his father, and there is no explanation of why Tom stays silent. The ending of the story was stilted and contrived. It almost read as if Bloor did not know how to wrap up the events, so he just ended them. The Plague Year is a great idea for a story that deserves much better.

I didn’t just read The Plague Year, I studied it as it was a reading competition book for my high school. I must say that it is sloppily written and it is obvious the author is not from Pennsylvania.You can never quite pin down where he places his town of Blackwater, Pennsylvania. He seems to want to place it in the eastern part of the state dropping names like “Schuylkill County” and references to the fictional town of “Caldera” that has an uncontrollable mine fire underneath it like the real town of Centralia also in the eastern part of the state.But the quick jaunt to the site of the Flight 93 plane crash – which happened in Somerset County, would put them in the southwestern portion of Pennsylvania. He also casually mentions anthracite and bituminous coal – but anthracite is only found in the far east of Pennsylvania.Also showing a lack of research, the “Food Giant” supermarket prominent in the story would never have sold beer in 2001. Pennsylvania has such ridiculous liquor laws that this was illegal then and only sporadically legal today.I found it hard to believe that the Florida police would just allow protagonist Tom to walk away from an active investigation – but the plot must roll on! The nasty depiction of Boy Scouts selling Christmas trees was also unkind and over the top.This book would have worked had Mr. Bloor researched a bit more and boned up on his geography. Opportunity lost. This is not even the ghost of the story of Breaking Bad. If you are looking for someone like Walter White, don’t walk – run – away.

This book is a good read for adolescents. It describes how drug addiction takes over and can ruin people's lives.

I loved this amazing book and how I could not ever stop reading!!!! I read at reading hour in school at the end of the day and I got out late sometimes bc I was so drawn into the book and hadn't noticed everyone had left!

It is late summer of 2001 when Tom starts to hear about this new drug called crystal meth. He lives in a small mining town in Pennsylvania, where meth and mining are the main things to do. When September 11 hits, people in town have a hard time coping with the state of the world, and more and more turn to drugs as a way to cope. The town becomes frightening as meth zombies are sighted more and more often, and crime reaches a new high. What happens over this course of this year will change Tom's life forever.I was so incredibly moved by this book. First of all, it was written in a way that is real, and honest, and young readers will easily relate. When meth gained popularity in the late 90's and early into the 2000's, these are the exact kinds of places that were hit, so I think the book is brilliantly set. These are the stories that rarely get told, and I am happy this one was. I am especially happy it is told from a young adult's frame of reference.I thought that Tom's character was well developed, as well as most of the supporting characters. However, I did have an issue with the development and realism of the drug counseling group Tom attends. First off, the leader of the group is a Master's level therapist, yet she has never heard of pica, and then just levels a guess at what type of disorder it may be. This would NEVER happen; any Masters program has an abnormal psych class, and every abnormal psych class covers this disorder. And no therapist worth their merit would simply level a guess about a disorder they knew nothing about. But I digress. Some of the minor supporting characters seemed a little flat, but in some ways, that served a purpose. We were never supposed to get close to them, since this was Tom's story.All in all, I think this was a good young adult book, appropriate for high school readers. It serves as a cautionary tale of how drugs can affect and entire town, and sadly is based in too much reality.