Winner of the 2009 Xeric Award

Fourteen and friendless, Justin doesn't want to run away from his domineering family - he wants them to run away from him. When a massive, extended power out grants him his wish, the quietly introverted teen must learn to survive in a world he's always tried to escape. In his seemingly quaint New England suburb, Justin encounters a unique collection of friends and tormentors, including a brazen young neighbor uninhibited by her inability to speak English, a dead woman who cheerfully haunts his wet dreams, and the eccentric holdouts in a town that has been evacuated by the military.

Atmospheric, surreal, but suffused with all the inherent humor and humiliation of adolescence, Power Out captures the exhilaration and terror of discovering how big the world is for the first time.

“Brilliant pacing.”
- Dean Haspiel, illustrator of The Alcoholic

“Great - deliberately rude and bleak.”
- Miss Lasko-Gross, A Mess of Everything

“It is said that literature and art are rewarded with contempt if you fail and hatred if you succeed. Are you ready for the hate, Nathan Schreiber!?!”
- Tim Hamilton, illustrator of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: The Authorized Adaptation