One Last Chance to Live

Gr 10 Up–One night, 17-year-old aspiring writer Nico Kardos, who is Mexican American, has a dream in which he is dead and is visited by the love of his life, Rosario Zamora, who died of a heroin overdose six months before. Convinced that he will be dead within the year upon waking and driven mad by the unremembered thing Rosario whispered in his ear during the dream, Nico's life becomes fractured. Between his desires to write something worthwhile and find out what truly happened to Rosario, he is overwhelmed. His mother's sickness is worsening; his 12-year-old brother is on the verge of joining the same gang that's pressuring Nico to run drugs. And, he has a chance encounter with a young woman he swears is Rosario's doppelgänger. Told over the course of two months and written as entries in Nico’s creative writing journal, Stork’s newest novel is a deeply emotional look at both the beauty of the creative process and the pain that can be found there, as well as an examination of the oppression and suffering that are in place in the world. The introspection that fills the pages of Nico’s journal may be too verbose for some readers—and indeed, there are some passages and dialogue that don’t feel teen-voiced—but every reader who has ever wanted to create will sympathize with Nico’s plight, as will those who know all too well the obstacles Nico faces.