As we look toward honoring Earth Day next week, Professor Ashlynn Wittchow gives us this YA recommendation that combines environmental concerns and a celebration of queer community in Ryan La Sala's The Dead of Summer.
 Ashlynn Wittchow | We welcome back contributor Dr. Ashlynn Wittchow this week in her second YA Pick for the month of April. Dr. Ashlynn Wittchow is an assistant professor of English education at Louisiana State University, where she teaches pre-service teachers enrolled in the Geaux Teach program. Prior to moving into higher education, she worked with middle and high students across South Carolina, New Jersey, and New York. Her writing has appeared in Changing English, English Journal, English Education, and other NCTE publications. Though she enjoys postapocalyptic literature, she freely admits that she would not, in all likelihood, survive a zombie apocalypse. She can be reached at [email protected]. |
The Dead of Summer by Ryan La Sala
In this ecological horror novel, The Dead of Summer follows Ollie Veltman, a townie, when he returns home to the tourist destination Anchor’s Mercy, an isolated island town rumored to have suffered from an environmental disaster in the early 1960s. Though the tourists are none the wiser, the townspeople have the troubling tendency to develop terminal illnesses. Ollie’s mother, who has been diagnosed with bone cancer, is no exception. However, the grown-ups on the island refuse to discuss these mysterious illnesses, not when the tourism industry on the island depends on rowdy bachelorette parties from the mainland. But it soon becomes impossible to ignore the problem when a seemingly parasitic subspecies of coral, c. imperia, begins to colonize human bodies, triggering an apocalypse on the island. Ollie and his friends must band together to survive the outbreak, uncovering a decades-old conspiracy along the way.
 | The Dead of Summer is an absolute page-turner with twists and turns—I gasped audibly on at least three separate occasions—that will keep readers on their toes. The narrative is nonlinear, unfolding in passages that alternate between first person narration that takes place during the outbreak and assorted multimodal artifacts that take place following the outbreak. The investigative artifacts—which include anonymized transcripts, handwritten field notes, and annotations in the margins—build suspense long before the actual outbreak, hinting at the horror looming on the horizon. Furthermore, these field notes include clues that will reward the attentive reader long before the big reveal in the final pages. Of course, there are subtle clues to be found within the prose passages as well. The opening chapter, in particular, evokes clever foreshadowing through its figurative language. Though there are passages that are genuinely unsettling, The Dead of Summer includes heartfelt moments that make it a profoundly moving read. |
In fact, there were several passages, particularly within the first-person narrative, that brought tears to my eyes. It would be easy to dismiss the Weepers, or those infected with c. imperia, as monstrous. La Sala, however, has an uncanny ability to remind his readers that the infected are, nevertheless, human. Though the infected tourists certainly have their monstrous moments—I’m looking at you, Bridezilla—the infected islanders might even be more than human. Several passages seem to suggest that the infected islanders are, at last, embedded within the ecosystem that has nurtured them from infancy. Since this is the first book in a planned duology, I am eager to see how these posthumanist themes continue to unfold in the sequel. La Sala has teased on social media that the forthcoming paperback release will include a sneak peek from the sequel!
| The Dead of Summer centers queer experiences as well, celebrating the chosen families formed within queer communities. La Sala has explained that Anchor’s Mercy was inspired by a real location: Provincetown, Massachusetts. P-Town is an unabashedly queer tourist destination on Cape Cod, and this real-world inspiration is immediately evident. The town map in the opening pages advertises LGBTQ+ friendly whale watching and bustling drag brunches. (Side note: La Sala clearly had a lot of fun coming up with punny business names. Scuttlebutt’s? Monster Pizza? Sunkin’ Donuts? The commitment to the bit is commendable.) Ollie mentions early in the novel that drag queens run the island. It is against this backdrop that readers are introduced to Willy, a.k.a. Wendy Pretendy, an indomitable drag queen who shelters the teenagers during the outbreak. Over the course of the novel, Ollie comes to see him as a parental figure. |  Ryan La Sala |
La Sala makes it clear in the acknowledgements that these intergenerational dynamics reflect his deep respect for queer elders, especially those who have fought to create safe havens for future generations.
In the classroom, The Dead of Summer could be used to open conversations about critical consciousness in the horror genre. I have often longed to unpack the social commentary found in horror films with students: Get Out (2017) foregrounds the fetishization of Black bodies, Parasite (2019) dismantles the myth of modern capitalism, and Sinners (2025) draws parallels between vampirism and cultural appropriation. Though these social commentaries have the potential to prompt rich classroom discussion, the (at times) gratuitous violence and sexual content can make horror films next to impossible to teach in the public-school classroom. However, teachers can turn instead to young adult literature to cultivate similar critical conversations. The Dead of Summer, in particular, could be used to cultivate critical conversations about extractive tourism, climate change, and other environmental disasters.
The Dead of Summer can be purchased in the hardback edition here, but be sure to be on the lookout for the forthcoming paperback edition this summer!
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