The Girl Who Owned a City

The premise of the novel is both straightforward and largely irrelevant to its plot, so Nelson spends little time fleshing out the concept: In short, there was a sudden plague that wiped out the entire adult population in a matter of weeks while leaving children under 12 unaffected. The lack of further explanation suggests that the novel is not about this mystery; rather, it takes for granted that there are no more adults, and that the children must learn to survive on their own in this new world. Nelson’s own comments about the book support this reading; he said he wrote the novel to show children not only the importance of thinking for themselves but also that they are capable of doing so.

Several episodes in this first section echo this theme. The nighttime scenes in Chapters 2 and 3 illustrate it explicitly: In Chapter 2, Lisa realizes the importance of thinking for oneself, and she recognizes this as the main difference between humans and animals (and implicitly between herself and her fellow children). The next chapter continues this trend as she spends her evening thinking through the day’s events and making plans that will help solve their problems. The flashback to the looted store echoes the same idea: The earlier children took all the junk food and money, but Lisa realizes both are useless in the new world. Instead, by thinking carefully about their situation, Lisa recognizes that they need nutritious food, which is still in good supply. In the terms the novel establishes, the prior children acted animalistically, whereas Lisa acted thoughtfully and in a civilized manner.

Along those lines, the novel considers self-sufficiency very important. Both of Lisa’s bedtime stories extol the virtues of self-sufficiency: In the first, “Todd” learns to fish in order to help them eat, and in the second, “Todd” and “Lisa” build their own business in order to pull themselves out of poverty. More indirectly, we see this value reinforced in the two houses Lisa searches; the first was the home of a successful businessman, while the second was a family farm. This also sets up a juxtaposition between formal education and practical life skills, as Lisa realizes how much of what’s now important she has had to figure out on her own rather than learning it in school. The novel doesn’t claim that formal education and institutions are useless—e.g., Lisa realizes that her Girl Scout uniform is a relic of a time when she belonged to something other than her family, but she still enjoys putting it on—but it implies that contemporary society neglects self-sufficiency.

It’s worth noting some contextual points here. The original novel was published in 1975, which places it both in the middle of the Cold War (though not at the height of it) and shortly after the gas crisis of 1973. Although a modern audience is more likely to connect the book’s plot to the COVID-19 pandemic, the work’s post-apocalyptic background originally drew on other perceived catastrophic threats. In this context, we can see the novel as juxtaposing a self-sufficient, entrepreneurial capitalist society and a more collective, communist society along the lines of the USSR—a metaphor that will become more pronounced as the novel progresses. Additionally, given the premise of the novel, it’s worth noting that the location of the Centers for Disease Control (the CDC) is Atlanta, Georgia, where Mr. Williams instructs his son to find the family friend for the promised vaccine. Finally, the republished version includes some anachronistic updates to the original 1975 version: e.g., references to CD-ROM drives and the 1992 Los Angeles riots.