After the Ashes
Thirteen-year-old Katrien Courtlandt wants nothing more than to run into the Javanese jungles and catalog beetles. But her aunt has other plans such as lessons on running a household and how to be a proper young woman. Also standing in Katrien’s way is her old friend and now most bitter enemy Brigitta Burkart, who is always getting Katrien in trouble with her father. What neither of the two girls know is that a much larger threat than each other looms forty kilometers across the strait: Krakatau, which is beginning to rumble to life. When the volcano finally explodes, Katrien finds herself fighting to save not only her life from the fire rain, choking ash, and tsunamis, but the life of Brigitta, too.
Joiner’s book has many familiar themes and she sets these against one of nature’s greatest cataclysms: the 1883 eruption of Mt. Krakatau. The story starts out slowly, but the second half of the book ramps up the pace and thrills. There are a few editorial discrepancies—oliebollen are not doughnuts, but better described as doughnut holes, and kampongs are villages, not thatched huts as Joiner calls them—but these are not enough to distract the reader. What I struggled with was a thirteen-year-old girl quoting Darwin in social situations, but that, too, was merely a minor distraction. Despite these, After the Ashes is a heart-warming tale of loss and love and friendship and survival.
