Armageddon Summer



A collaborative Young Adult novel by Bruce Coville and Jane Yolen written in 1998.

Two teenagers, Jed and Marina, have little in common beside the fact that their parents have joined a Cult that believes that the world is about to end on July 27, 2000. All the families in this cult (called The Believers), have made a camp at the top of a mountain to wait out the Apocalypse.

This novel provides examples of:

 * Adam and Eve Plot:
 * Anti Villain:
 * As the Good Book Says: Reverend Beelson does this several times, and Marina does it to.
 * Crisis of Faith:
 * Cult: Jed and Marina's parents join one.
 * Cult Colony: The Believers make an isolated mountain camp to live in during Armageddon.
 * God Is Good/God Is Evil: Not surprisingly, the characters bring up a lot of metaphysical questions related to this answer.
 * Heaven Seeker: The Believers.
 * Hot for Preacher: Marina's mother is implied to be this.
 * Noodle Incident: We never do find out what happened to the Reverend in those three years he disappeared.
 * Sinister Minister: Reverend Beelson.
 * Twenty Minutes Into the Future: Written in 1998 and set in 2000.
 * Truth in Television: For those of you not old enough to remember, there was quite a large scare about computer bugs and the way computers store dates in the years directly preceding 2000.
 * Turn of the Millennium: Set in this time period.