Ashfall

Ashfall, a novel by Mike Mullin, poses a hypothetical account of a boy whose world is devastated by the eruption of the supervolcano beneath Yellowstone National Park. Blending scientific concepts, such as volcanology, engineering, physics, biology, and climate change, with the literary tropes of suspense, apocalypse, and the separation from one’s home, it offers a well-researched realist account of how an ordinary life might be impacted by this rare, but inevitable, natural disaster.

The book begins as Alex, a fifteen-year-old high schooler who prefers video games to socializing, is feuding with his parents because he doesn’t want to go with them to visit his uncle’s farm in Illinois. After a brief dispute, they agree to let him stay home for the weekend, leaving on the 140-mile drive to the farm. The narrator gives some foreshadowing environmental context: Alex’s town of Cedar Falls, Iowa is relatively close to Yellowstone National Park, the site of an underground supervolcano that has erupted only a few times in the past 2.1 million years. Tourists happily flock to the national park, enjoying its hot springs and powerful geysers, mostly ignorant or unconcerned about the dormant volcano.

Alex, anticipating a weekend of freedom from parental controls, quickly regrets his decision when the power cuts out. The supervolcano has erupted, disabling the power grid. He leaves home, walking through a layer of ash over a foot thick that has coated the ground. He observes many desperate people in search of food and water to stockpile and shelter to shield themselves from the toxic ash. Alex decides to travel to the nearby town of Warren, using his father’s skis to traverse the ash drifts. He finds a school full of refugees, sleeping there for a night and moving on to seek more secure shelter and make progress reaching his family.



Alex soon runs out of water. Desperate, he finds the home of a couple named Elroy and Edna, who reluctantly give him shelter, averse to using up any more of their stockpiled rations. The next morning, Alex is awakened by Elroy, who kicks him out. He travels back into town, encountering a man named Target. A resourceful ex-convict, Target asks Alex to help him assemble a team. Target’s malicious intentions soon become clear and in a brawl, he pierces Alex in the torso with an ax. Alex manages to throw Target into a fire, and he runs out of sight, covered in flames.

Bleeding profusely, Alex skis to the nearest farmstead. There, he meets Darla biking on a stationary bike to power the electrical generator. Alex immediately faints due to blood loss. He wakes in bed, his wounds having been bandaged by Darla’s mother. They arrange for Alex to live and work at their farm. In the following weeks, life seems to stabilize for Alex, who gets along well with Darla’s family. One day, Darla notices her rabbits are getting sick. She brings Alex along to Worthington in search of a vet. When they arrive, they learn that he is dead. A woman named Rita Mae tells them that 12 million years ago, a similar eruption occurred in Idaho, gradually killing off the animals that were exposed to ash. She also shares that the government is largely neglecting to help the refugees in Iowa, choosing to focus mainly on the Midwest state of Illinois.

They return home to find a man assaulting Darla’s mother. Alex kills him and is immediately accosted by Target, who survived the fire. Target shoots Darla’s mother, who dies; he escapes on foot. Alex and Darla hide in the barn but are soon discovered by Target, who sets it on fire. Ironically, Target is the one who dies.



Unable to mourn for long, Alex and Darla go back to Worthington, resolving to find his family. A blizzard breaks out, and they seek shelter in an abandoned house with a gun. The following days are full of seemingly desperate moments, but they experience a shift in perspective, beginning to understand that these triumphs affirm their will to survive. They meet a woman whose baby is dying, and try to help her save it, but failing, later help her bury it. They also find abandoned livestock and learn to hunt and kill it for food.

On the way back to Warren, Alex and Darla are retained in a refugee camp led by militant quasi-soldiers who exploit them for work. After one of the soldiers attempts to hire Darla as a prostitute for the soldiers, Alex breaks his nose and is imprisoned. Darla aids their escape by hijacking a bulldozer; they return to Illinois and discover that Alex’s parents have already ventured back to Iowa to find him. Nonetheless, he reunites with his sister.

The novel concludes as Darla manages the implementation of a new kind of economy in Warren where commodities are exchanged at agreed rates to ensure that everyone has the resources they need. No longer nomadic, Darla and Alex recover from environmental catastrophe to sow the seeds of a sophisticated society, humbled by the precariousness of life but empowered to forge ahead and build a new, ethical society.