DBRLTeen

What if you only had one year to live…and you knew it?  That’s what happens to 18-year-old Ben Wolf.  He finds out he has a blood disease that will almost certainly kill him in a year.  The recommended treatment may extend his life by a short time, but will be debilitating and ruin his last year.

So, realizing he’d “rather be a flash than a slowly cooling ember”, Ben decides to skip the treatment, and live his last year of high school the best way he can.  Knowing of his impending death, he tries things he wouldn’t have dared to do before,  trying to live a whole lifetime in one year.

Why do his parents let him do this?  They don’t know.  Ben doesn’t tell them; in fact, he doesn’t tell anyone.  Is that a good idea?  Read and find out.

Don’t worry, we haven’t spoiled the book for you.  Chris finds out about his disease in chapter one, but there are lots of surprises to come.  So DBRLTeen recommends Deadline, by Chris Crutcher, because we all need to think about what we’d change in our lives, if we knew we weren’t going to live forever.

This book is one of the 2009-2010 nominees for the Missouri Gateway Readers Award.

See author Chris Crutcher’s website here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Reviewed by staff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.