Review: "Isolated" by Kevin L. Borgan

Kevin Borgan's novel Isolated presents an interesting "what if" scenario which makes for an exciting read.  A mysterious plague strikes a small town in Colorado, leaving only high school and middle school age students as survivors.  Initially quarantined at the outset of the mystery disease, the small town of Rock Creek, Colorado is abandoned by the army.  The teen survivors must fend for themselves, and as food and supplies grow short and the community loses power, Rock Creek is on the verge of anarchy.

Isolated's protagonist, Meagan Greene, is a Rock Hill High School student who has just lost her father in the plague outbreak.  Having been abandoned by her mother, who had left her husband and family to run off to California with another man, Meagan must now fend for herself and take care of her younger brother Nathan.  Nathan is age 14 and has been diagnosed with Oppositional Defiance Disorder.  He is resentful and defiant of his sister's authority as the new head of household, wanting to spend most of his time playing video games or hanging out with his skateboarding buddies, many of which are part of Rock Creek's semi-gang known as the "Shredders."

With all of the town's authority figures now dead, and the community cut off from any contact with the outside world, many of Rock Creek's teens begin to wonder if the entire United States has been decimated by this strange disease.  Anna Mueller, head of Rock Creek High's student council, steps up with a proposal to establish the student council as an interim government with herself as its president, at least until more is known about the plague and the extent of the devastation it has wreaked.

After convincing the teenagers to vote in favor of her proposed government, Anna quickly begins setting up a dictatorship seizing food, fuel and other supplies as well as firearms and ammunition.  She begins rationing food and supplies, and sets up a security force consisting largely of players from the high school's football team to enforce her policies.  The absence of a police force in Rock Creek has enabled the members of the Shredders to obtain firearms and become more violent.  This gives Anna a scapegoat with which to justify the extreme measures implemented by the interim government.

Nathan's defiance of his sister pushes him to run away and join the Shredders.  After a violent with Security leaves several members of the gang dead and others in custody, Nathan goes missing, leaving Meagan not knowing her brother's whereabouts or if he's even alive.  She has reliable allies in her best friend Jennifer Newsome as well as Rob Hastings, a classmate whose survivalist parents owned a local gas station before dying from the plague.  After Meagan's home is raided and several supplies seized by Security, who also take Jennifer in the process, Meagan and Rob must form a plan for moving the supplies she has hidden before they can be seized by Security or by Nathan's Shredder co-horts.  They also must decide what to do about Anna Mueller and her interim government as Anna's totalitarian grip on the community tightens.

Isolated is an exciting novel that engages the reader and makes one wonder what if something like this were to happen, whether it be in Smalltown America, a major city or across the entire nation.  Borgan crafts a great story with characters you can like and feel very strongly for.  I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and would love to see a follow-up, especially since the ending of this book practically seems to beg for a sequel.  Isolated is a very good read, and I am now enjoying Borgan's Dark Lord trilogy which I look forward to reviewing here in the near future.  Isolated is available for purchase on Amazon.com.