Fallout is a young adult novel by award-winning author Ellen Hopkins

Ellen Hopkins

Ellen Hopkins is a novelist who has published several New York Times bestselling novels that are popular among the teenage and young adult audience.-Career:...

. It follows Glass in the Crank series.

Plot Summary

The novel is a memoir of the lives of three children of a meth-addicted mother, Kristina, and how her addiction affected their lives. They now live in different homes, with different parents, as well as different last names. Each of them has a different story, some more fortunate than others. Hunter knows about his sisters and new younger brothers, while Summer knows about her brothers and Autumn knows nothing.

It starts with Hunter’s story; adopted and raised by his biological mom’s mother and stepfather, he was put in good hands. He refers to his adoptive parents as "Mom and Dad." He works at a radio station in Reno, Nevada, and makes decent money, but lives at home. His girlfriend, Nikki, supports him in everything he does. As Christmas approaches, he is living with Nikki and having relationship troubles. Hunter is doing drugs more frequently, and cheats on Nikki with a persistent radio groupie. All the while, Hunter is feeling like a piece of him is missing because of the lack of knowledge about his father. When he sees him, he knows, but his father is the date of his fellow coworker, Montana. Hunter then gets drunk and calls Brendan (his father) out on his actions about how him raping Kristina produced Hunter. Once that situation is in the past, another problem occurs, as Hunter is approached by Nikki, who hears a voicemail left by Leah on Hunter’s phone about the cheating incident. He is kicked out of Nikki’s house and takes the guestroom in his parents' house because, thanks to Kristina, his two younger brothers, David and Donald, have moved in and taken his room. Shortly after Hunter has moved back in, he is notified that Kristina will be spending Christmas with them.

Autumn’s story takes place at her grandfather’s house in Texas. She has been moved around from city to city in order to keep her father and mother away from her. Her OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) and frequent panic attacks make her a loner at school, so her best friend is her Aunt Cora. Although she promises Autumn they will always be friends, she is wooed by her massage therapist professor and taken away from her. Autumn is happy for her aunt, but jealous that she has never been so giddy and in love before. She doesn’t stay jealous long; a new boy comes to her school and is immediately taken with her. She has a hard time opening up to him and even tells him her parents are dead. His name is Bryce and he ends up being Autumn’s first boyfriend, first kiss and first time. When her aunt announces her engagement, the happiness she gets from her new boyfriend fades and she feels alone. Desperate to make sure he stays with her, she has sex with him without protection. Realizing that being drunk makes everything easier to deal with, she begins drinking to make herself feel better. Her father's and grandmother’s interruption at Aunt Cora’s wedding only makes things worse, bringing her past to her present; then, Bryce finds out her parents aren’t dead. Devastated about the lying, Bryce leaves Autumn, and to make matters worse her drinking has gotten out of hand and she is almost raped by the groom’s cousin, Micah. The wedding ends when Autumn realizes how lonely she is and begins to wish she is pregnant, and her father finds her and tells her how she came to be. In the process, he convinces her to go to Reno for Christmas to see the mother she never knew.

The California foster system took Summer away shortly after living with her father when they were abandoned by Kristina. She knows everyone in her family except for Autumn. Her father’s ex-girlfriends have molested and used her causing her, to be thrown in different homes with different problems. Her life is pretty stable in one home until one of the meth-using girls that also lives there molests one of the younger girls; it hits close to home and she is unable to control her anger. She gets in a fight with the meth girl and ends up getting sent to live back with her father and his girlfriend of the moment. The day after the fight, her boyfriend, Matt, saw her face and offered no sympathy, so she ran to his best friend, Kyle, who always showed interest. She ends up cheating on her boyfriend with Kyle by having sex with him. She knows that Kyle uses meth and other drugs but his loving nature has drawn her in. When he and Summer confront Matt about their newfound relationship, she sees the side of Kyle she never wanted to and realizes his addiction and anger may cause problems. The living conditions at her father’s house aren’t the best; the constant smoking irritates her asthma and as Thanksgiving approaches, she starts to miss Kristina. She calls her, but can’t remember why; she was blown away by her mother’s selfishness and when her father is drunk later that night, he reveals that Kristina only cares about herself. Her father being drunk proves to be a much worse situation than just spilling the truth; his drinking costs him a DUI and he loses Summer. She is sent to another home in Fresno. Leaving her boyfriend and life behind, she is unwilling to move far away. When she gets to her new home, she is immediately taken aback by her new foster father. His demeanor worries her and makes her wonder what secrets the other girls in the house might have. She knows from experience not to get close to the other girls in the house, but one of the girls tells Summer her secrets and becomes attached to her. During the few days Summer is there, she hides her cell phone and planned to meet Kyle. When she sneaks from under her foster sister’s watch long enough to escape, she ends up running away with Kyle for Christmas—he is so in love with her that he even attempts to stop using meth for her, which means suffering through withdrawal. She and Kyle save up money and live out of his car while they head to a ski lodge, where Kyle plans to work.

The stories collide when Kyle and Summer get in a car accident and the closest place to them is Reno, Nevada. Summer ends up calling her grandfather to pick her up from the hospital the morning after the blizzard hit and the accident happened. Hunter is out picking up Kristina and his grandfather from the airport after spending the early morning making up with Nikki. He knows that things won't quite be merry and joyful Christmas morning with the whole family being together. Autumn and Trey show up before Summer gets there and when Trey sees Kristina, they are immediately drawn to each other and spend most of the day before dinner talking to each other. Summer tries to be sisterly to Autumn and Autumn doesn’t know what to make of all of it. When dinner starts, David asks when he’ll be going home and Kristina says she doesn’t know; Donald gets angry and tells her he never wants to go back—that he never wants to be with her again. Hunter is the first one to jump up when Kristina acts offended and he yells at her, telling her the only person responsible for what happened to her was her. Summer jumps in the argument too when Kristina begins to complain that she doesn’t have the resources to take care of her kids or give them a good life. The outcome of the argument is unknown, but Hunter, Autumn and Summer can all look at Kristina at the dinner table on Christmas morning and see themselves.

The book ends with a newspaper article saying Marie Haskins has put her new book ‘Monster’, on indefinite hold while Kristina is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. At this point, Kristina has reunited with her husband, Trey, and with her resources, she is trying to make her life better so she can be the mother she has never been.

Characters

• Kristina Georgia Snow is the meth addicted mother of Hunter, Autumn and Summer. Her story is told in the previous books by Ellen Hopkins, Crank and Glass. Although Autumn does not know her mother is Kristina, she is often mentioned in Hunter and Summer's stories; determining their lives without particularly being involved. This druggie mom has already set them on different paths, and because of her addiction, each of her children seem to have a characteristic that she possessed when she was dancing with the "monster."

• Hunter Seth Haskins, Kristina’s oldest son, was adopted and raised by Kristina’s mother, Marie Haskins, and has the best life out of all of Kristina’s children. He uses drugs too, but doesn’t dare try meth because he knows how it can affect his life in such a negative way. Hunter, the radio celebrity, is often getting caught in sticky situations because of his small town fame. Throughout the book he is constantly trying not to give into the temptation of cheating on or disappointing his girlfriend. Even though Hunter knows who his mother is, the resemblance between them is slim, and he is desperate to find the person whose chromosomes gave him the looks his mother lacked. In a relationship with his described gorgeous girlfriend, although he cheated on her with Leah he is still known to be in love with her.

• Autumn Rose Sheperd, the OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) and panic attack having teen, is the only child of Kristina’s that does not know her mother. She knows her father is Trey, and according to the novel she lives with Trey’s father and his sister Cora. For most of the book her Aunt Cora is the only person who grounds her and the only person she can talk to. Her aura isn’t warm enough to make many friends. She lives with her single aunt and alcoholic, prescription drug abusing grandfather. But her aura soon becomes warm and she begins to drink to keep it that way.

• Summer Lily Kenwood, the youngest child of Kristina’s during this chapter of her life, is the only child who knows her mother and father. Even so, this foster child has been tossed from home to home and has experienced some of the most terrifying things she possibly could. She is also the one child who keeps in contact with Kristina, and knows more about her background than the others. Although Kristina hasn’t been a part of her life, it’s almost as if she is an exact replica of Kristina through her choices and actions.

• Trey, the other meth addict parent of Autumn, was the one Kristina was truly “in love” with and who played a major role in getting Kristina addicted to the monster. He is a jail bird, and flies in and out of prisons causing Autumn’s grandfather to be stressed and not trust Autumn when she goes out, in fear that she may be making the same mistakes Trey made. He was never a big part of Autumn’s life and she has not seen him since she was very little, and even that was a memory she is not fond of.

• Grandfather, Trey’s father, takes care of Autumn. He keeps her on a tight leash trying not to make the same mistakes he did with Trey. All the while, it seems like he might have influenced Trey’s druggie behavior, being a pill popper himself.

• Marie Haskins, the adoptive mother of Hunter, is Kristina’s own mother. She is a writer and the books she wrote gained Hunter slight popularity in high school after years of being bullied. When Kristina got pregnant and started doing meth, she was the one who tried to help her, but ended up kicking her out.

• Dad (Summer’s), Summer’s drug using biological father, took care of her for most of her life before she was dumped into the foster system. The girlfriend he had when Summer came to live with him is the reason for the permanent scarring of Summer’s psyche, because she molested her. His name is given as Jason Kenwood on the "Fallout Family Tree" of Hopkins's website.

• Aunt Cora, Trey's sister, is Autumn's best friend and Aunt. She is the only one for Autumn to confide in and talk to because Autumn doesn't have many friends at school. She winds up getting married to Liam and leaving Autumn behind to make friends her age.

• Nikki, Hunter's flawless girlfriend, constantly puts up with Hunter's cheating and drug use. She loves Hunter just as much as he loves her, and tries her hardest to keep him in line.

• Kyle, the Summer loving friend of Matt, uses meth and other anonymous drugs to feel better about his also shattered life. His meth usage and smooth charismatic ways cause Summer’s dad to even say that Kyle reminds him of Trey.

• Scott Haskins, Kristina's stepfather, is Hunter's adoptive father. He relates to Hunter and Nikki with his wife, and the struggles he has being married to a famous "Martha Stewart" like writer.

• Brendan, the biological father of Hunter, is introduced through Montana—as her date to a radio function. Although Hunter had never met his father, when Hunter saw him for the first time he was able to look in his eyes and see how similar Brendan’s eyes were to his own, and knew exactly who he was.

• Matt, Summer's ex boyfriend, is Kyle's best friend.

• Bryce, Autumn's first boyfriend, was her key to not being a loner. But she immediately gets attached to him, and has sex with him—Without protection.

• Montana, the plastic co worker, is Hunter's work partner for radio show outings.

• Micah, the cousin of Liam, flirts with Autumn constantly until a drunken incident goes too far, and his aggressive nature is revealed.

• Liam, Aunt Cora’s husband, changes Autumn’s life, by taking her Aunt Cora away from her.

• Leah, the groupie, tore Nikki and Hunter apart when she convinced Hunter to cheat on Nikki with her.

Reception

Fallout, like all of Ellen Hopkins' books, is written in stanzas. Johanna Lewis for School Library Journal complimented the "not-quite poetry" noting that it was "as solid as ever, though her visual formations get more mystifying and extraneous with each novel". If the book were turned into a movie it would be rated R. Barbara Johnston for Voice of Youth Advocates praised Hopkins saying that even though it contained F-bombs and some sexual description, the "poetry is the perfect vehicle to deliver the festering emotional beating that drug addiction inflicts on families." Even with all the buzz about Fallout being positive, Lewis complained that "the venndiagram of Kristina's baby daddies, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and drug buddies is impossible to follow" and that it may frustrate most readers. Regardless of its difficulty, Johnston wrote that it was a quick read-despite it's intimidating page length-and impossible to put down.