The Great Big One

Everyone in Clade City knows the Great Big One is coming--a tsunami guaranteed to decimate the West Coast and sink their small coastal town. If they manage to live that long. Nuclear strikes seem increasingly likely. Wildfires. Solar flares, and a growing chance of apocalyptic horsemen. So Griff and the Lost Coast Preppers will be ready. Canning. Stockpiling. Monitoring radio signals. To survive, one must expect the unexpected. But the songs catch Griff and even his twin Leo by surprise.

What begins as a striking moment becomes a competition between Griff and Leo that divides the brothers: Griff toward music and Chastity, a striking new girl with an angelic voice; Leo toward his late-night prepping missions and stealing Chastity's attention away from Griff.

But when a mission to track the source of the music alters the course of Griff's understanding of life, which will win out: hope or fear?

“" Wildman is that good song that gets under your skin and respins your DNA."-- p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial; color: #0e0e0e; -webkit-text-stroke: #0e0e0e; background-color: #ffffff}span.s1 {font-kerning: none}Martha Brockenbrough, award-winning author of The Game of Love and Death”

"Wildman is that good song that gets under your skin and respins your DNA."--Martha Brockenbrough, award-winning author of The Game of Love and Death
"The book shines the brightest when it toes the line between real and surreal, highlighting the existential question that high-school graduates face: How do I live the rest of my life?"--Booklist
"Compelling character development . . . will find an audience in teens with a sense of wanderlust and an itch for adventure."--School Library Journal
"J.C. Geiger's The Great Big One is a love song to the people and places that define us, a punk rock anthem of adolescence--a sweeping symphony that picks the reader up like a powerful wave and carries them away in its pages. It is beautiful, dangerous (as all good literature should be), and perhaps most importantly, a challenge to embrace the mysterious."--Bryan Bliss, author of the National Book Award longlist title We'll Fly Away
"Think Cain and Able looking for Woodstock and hippies while on a remarkable quest for the meaning of life. J.C Geiger has built a unique, gritty, and challenging world decorated with similes, music, myth, love, and death."
]--School LIbrary Connection
"With an ambitious plotline and nuanced characters, Geiger's (Wildman) novel begins as a tense love triangle before veering into a . . . richly detailed mystery about the terrible catastrophes that even the most ardent prepper cannot anticipate."--Publisher's Weekly
Praise for The Great Big One:

"Geiger's staccato, enigmatic sentence fragments are stylistically interesting and poetic... this sophomore novel is a moving, bittersweet examination of the search for a meaningful signal in the noise after a death."
--Booklist

Praise for Wildman:

"I LOVE THIS BOOK. It's hilarious, sad, and unputdownable."--Laini Taylor, New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award Finalist

*"A thought-provoking, hilarious, eloquent story of a young man realizing that the world is much larger than the one set up for him."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"Geiger plays fast and loose with realism, sprinkling in a hint of magic, unlikely luck, and unreliable narration to blur the genres a bit between realistic fiction and fantasy."--BCCB
"Lyrically told in the third person over three parts, this tale of first love, music, grief, and identity takes unexpected turns."--Kirkus

J.C. Geiger (jcgeiger.com) survived an earthquake on the Mouth of Hell volcano in Nicaragua, learned to drive stick shift on a bookmobile, and once fell asleep while running. He also writes fiction. He is a GrandSLAM Storytelling Champion at The Moth, and his work has appeared on stage at The Second City and No Shame Theatre. His debut novel, Wildman, was named by Bank Street as a Best YA Book of the Year. J.C. lives about sixty miles from the Oregon coast, and makes the trip as often as he can.

Everyone in Clade City knows the Great Big One is coming--a tsunami guaranteed to decimate the West Coast and sink their small coastal town. If they manage to live that long. Nuclear strikes seem increasingly likely. Wildfires. Solar flares, and a growing chance of apocalyptic horsemen. So Griff and the Lost Coast Preppers will be ready. Canning. Stockpiling. Monitoring radio signals. To survive, one must expect the unexpected. But the songs catch Griff and even his twin Leo by surprise.What begins as a striking moment becomes a competition between Griff and Leo that divides the brothers: Griff toward music and Chastity, a striking new girl with an angelic voice; Leo toward his late-night prepping missions and stealing Chastity's attention away from Griff. But when a mission to track the source of the music alters the course of Griff's understanding of life, which will win out: hope or fear?

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