The Girl Who Owned a City

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section needs to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please help improve this article with relevant internal links. (October 2007)

The Girl Who Owned a City is a novel by O. T. Nelson, first published in 1975. This book, sometimes taught in schools, is considered to be best suited for those between the ages of 10 and 14 (depending on reading ability).

This is a post-apocalyptic book about leadership and survival. Nelson has stated that his intent in writing the novel was to translate the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand into terms children could understand.^[1]

[edit] Plot

The story takes place in the Chicago suburb of Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

A deadly virus has swept the world, killing off everyone over the age of twelve in the space of a month or so. Ten-year-old Lisa Nelson and her small brother Todd (these are the names of author Nelson's own children) are surviving, like all the children in the story, by looting abandoned houses and shops. Although there are abandoned cars in every driveway and lining every street, Lisa is the first child to think of driving one. She is also the first to think of raiding a farm, and the first to look at the dwindling supplies in stores and deduce that groceries come from warehouses. She finds a supermarket warehouse and raids it, enlisting the help of a boy her own age, but makes clear to him that the entire warehouse and all its contents are her exclusive property, not to be shared unless she chooses.

She considers relocating to the farm, but decides against it because it is difficult to defend (other children are starting to form gangs) and because "planning and getting the world back to the way it was, with schools, and hospitals, and electricity" are much more "exciting" than "hid{ing} away on a farm ... dig{ging} in the dirt all day".

Lisa and her friends are approached by the "Chidester Avenue Gang", led by Tom Logan (a careful examination of the text, and of a map of Glen Ellyn, reveals that the "Chidester Avenue Gang" lives no more than a block from Lisa's house on Grand Avenue). The gang's leader, suspecting that Lisa has a source of supplies, offers a food-for-protection deal, which Lisa declines. Unhesitatingly taking charge, she forms her block-long stretch of Grand Avenue into a "militia", armed with guns and Molotov cocktails. When the "militia" proves entirely unsuccessful at defending the "Land of Grandville" against "the fearful and cruel army of Chidester and Elm" (the small children are inexplicably unwilling to shoot other small children), Lisa comes up with the idea of moving the whole community of "child-families" -- and the entire contents of the warehouse -- into the local high school, and transforming it into a "city". A city in which she is the only authority, by virtue of ownership: the fact that she saw the abandoned high school, and thought of moving there, has earned her sole title to the "City of Glenbard" and everything in it.

She is out smarted by Tom Logan and his gang by tricking her. Then, when Lisa gets shot in the arm, Todd and Lisa's friend Jill do surgery, and complete it successfully. She regains power of Glenbard shortly after.