98.2

by Henley J. Alexandre

In Eden, Washington, there are rules. Wear a facemask. Be home by curfew. And, most importantly, wash your hands. This is Emily's normal. Growing up in the fifty-year wake of a global health pandemic, Emily has never known any different. However, now that she is sixteen, the world is starting to look different. A new friendship is opening her eyes to life before the global pandemic and, as she learns more about the past, she grows even more frustrated with her present. Emily begins to see small fractures in the daily habits and routines that have come to define her existence. Risking the quiet comforts of normalcy, Emily's curiosity takes hold and she begins to step outside of everyday life in Eden.

Fifty-two years earlier, Sam is returning to campus for his final semester at St. Agatha University. Greeting old friends and preparing for graduation, Sam is wrestling with the excitement and sadness that comes with closing the door on his college years. However, his senior year is cut short when a horrible virus sweeps the globe and life is brought to a screeching halt. The virus changes everything and Sam struggles to adjust to life in the pandemic. Wear a facemask. Be home by curfew. And, most importantly, wash your hands. This is Sam's new normal.

Two sides of the same coin, Sam and Emily are desperately searching for answers. But, at what cost?

300 pages, Paperback

Published March 9, 2021

About the author

Henley J. Alexandre was born in northeastern Wisconsin, where he developed a passion for the great outdoors. He spent his youth camping in Peninsula State Park, hiking wooded trails, and fishing on the shores of Lake Michigan.

After leaving Wisconsin, Alexandre earned advanced degrees from Yale and Georgetown University. He eventually settled in Washington, DC, where he works as a marketing and communications professional.

In 2020, he turned his talents toward fiction literature and produced his debut novel, 98.2. His work is influenced by the long history of coming-of-age literature and cinema that defined his upbringing. This includes works by Chaim Potok, Lowis Lowry, K.H. McMullan, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, and Kevin Williamson.

As a rock climber and graphic artist, outdoor themes and aesthetics often work their way into his writing. More than anything, Alexandre aspires to tell human stories that explore our deepest desires and our most intimate relationships. His writing details the timeless and universal character of growing up and the importance of our relationships in times of need.

Reviews

[Vanessa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yikes

[Alexander McAuliffe]

Alexandre’s authorial debut is an ominous blending of our own world and a dystopian Other, unfolding two parallel lives a half-century apart. Sam is a college student living through the onset of last spring’s pandemic; Emily is a high school student in a command society rigidly organized by the pandemic and its aftermath. Alexandre relies too heavily on his audience’s visceral personal experiences of the past year, painting the conditions of his characters only in allusive strokes; nevertheless, I am impressed at his ability to reckon with his own feelings throughout the beginning of our plague year fully enough to venture such a story so soon. As this year progresses and we overcome the suffering and fear that COVID and the public response to it wrought, I am optimistic that his pandemic duration will be “wrong” by at least fifty years. Yet his book will remain an admirable attempt to capture the dreads and sinking disorganization of the moments when all our easy assumptions of normalcy and the pursuit of happiness evaporated into calculations of risk, safety and “social distance”.