See the cover and read an exclusive excerpt from Tommy Wallach's Strange Fire 

It’s been a year since Tommy Wallach’s last book came out. But lucky for fans, the Thanks for the Trouble author has another one coming this year.

Titled Strange Fire, the novel is the first in a trilogy, and tells the story of brothers Clive and Clover Hamill, the gospel-spreading sons of a minister of a new civilization of survivors, called “The Descendancy.” However when their ministry discovers a group of people attempting to bring back the technology of the past—which may have brought on the destruction that nearly wiped them all out—Clive and Clover become separated by their warring beliefs, with each taking a different path… that might see them go up against one another.

Ahead of Strange Fire‘s release on Oct. 3, EW is pleased to reveal it’s cover, as well as present an exclusive excerpt, which you can read below.

Excerpt from Strange Fire by Tommy Wallach

At the velvety, blue-black hour just before dawn, the boy climbed out of bed and quietly pushed his bedroom window open. The roof was steeply pitched, and the previous night’s storm had left the shingles slippery as eels, but he was adroit at such maneuvers; he sometimes made a few shekels sweeping out his neighbors’ chimneys with a long handled broom he’d secretly named Sir Sweepy.

The boy side-stepped to the very edge of the roof, then sat down. From this position, he could just tap his boot heel against the second-floor window of his younger sister’s room. After a moment, she tapped back, and a minute later, she emerged onto the roof. Her wild shock of black hair and long white nightdress were both whipping around in the wind as if they were fixing to fly away.

“You must be freezing,” he said.

His sister ignored him. “Is it ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Then do it already.”

The boy stepped up to stand on the crest of the steepled roof, holding the kite in one hand and the spool in the other. This was the moment of truth. He closed his eyes and listened for the ripple of leaves along the pathway below that signaled an upswell of breeze; when he heard it, he cocked his arm and threw the frame out into space. The wind took hold of it immediately, and the boy was so surprised that he nearly lost his grip. The kite fought hard against him, a prisoner being dragged to the gallows, but he held fast to the spool, playing out the line in order to give his captive a bit more room to breathe. The black fabric was more noticeable than he’d expected, reflecting the moonlight in white waves up and down its skin, like some sort of dragon. It bucked and banked, once dipping down below the line of the roof, then whipping back up toward the sky with a breathtaking swiftness.

“It’s beautiful,” his sister said. Her tone was reverential, awe-struck.

“Isn’t it?”

The boy understood now why such an activity was banned; this pleasure was far too keen to be holy. He felt himself becoming one with the kite, carried aloft by some impossible force. Unable to help himself, he let out a single loud whoop.

This joyful noise did not go unheard. Just next door, Emilia Cardacci happened to be awake as well. She was penning a letter to her paramour, a young man with whom she’d become a little too well-acquainted three months earlier, and whom she was now attempting to cajole into proposing to her, when some animal part of her brain registered movement beyond the thick glass of her window. She looked up at the night sky. Stars disappeared and reappeared, as if trying to signal her somehow. A bat? Impossible. No bat had ever danced like that. Nor would a bat allow itself to be leashed by the foot, as this one had. Emilia had no word for what she was seeing, and yet she eventually worked out the gist of it: someone on the roof of the house next door had built a flying device. And who else could it be but that strange little boy?

He’s lucky it’s only me seeing this, Emilia thought, glancing over at her sister, Lily, still sound asleep, dreaming of doing chores and obeying rules, most likely. If that little prude had spotted the boy’s misdeed, she would’ve gone screaming for their parents in an instant.

But no—this moment was reserved for Emilia alone, suddenly connected to something greater than herself by this sparkling black diamond capering through the early-morning darkness. She watched the sparkling black diamond caper weightlessly through the early morning air, and felt something lighten inside of her in response. When the boy let out his whoop, it took everything in her power not to whoop along with him. If flight was possible, then everything was possible. She didn’t have to marry some boy she’d fallen in love with (and with whom she’d fallen out of love almost immediately after) just because of a single unfortunate tryst. She didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to do. She could be like that…that thing up in the sky: free.

For many weeks afterward, Emilia would wonder if everything that came next really happened as she remembered it. For in her memory, the horror gripped her as a kind of prophecy, even before the wind gusted and the black diamond suddenly puffed up like an angry rooster. She was already on her feet, hands against the window, as the kite pulled the boy down the steepled roof, holding the leash in his hands.

Let go, she wanted to scream, and at the same time, she understood why he couldn’t. The kite had opened a doorway, a glimpse into a world they hadn’t even known existed.

The boy disappeared over the edge, down past the gable and out of Emilia’s sight. And then his little sister appeared at the very spot where he had fallen. She must have been up on the roof too, and had seen it all happen from just a few feet away.

Emilia had never liked the girl much: pretty as anything, too pretty really, but just as strange. Stared at you like she was seeing into your soul. Never bothered saying good morning or good evening. Even now, she wasn’t screaming or crying, just standing there, gazing downward.

It took Emilia a moment to remember herself, then she ran downstairs and out into the chill of the morning. The boy lay in the alley between their houses. His eyes were open, as if still hungry for another few seconds of vision through that doorway, and his neck was bent at an obscene angle. The spindle had been crushed beneath his body, and by some miracle, the kite continued to gambol in the air above them, like an oblivious animal.

Ever so slowly, Emilia reeled in the kite. When she had it safely in hand, she dropped it to the ground and trampled it underfoot, shattering the thin wooden braces. She reached down and tore out the silk, rubbing it between her fingers: impossibly soft.

“Give that to me.”

It was the boy’s sister, who’d emerged silent as a shadow from her house. She still wasn’t crying—and how was that possible? For an instant, Emilia entertained the thought of refusing. Something inside her wanted to keep the silk, as a sign or symbol of something. But that would be crazy.

“I’m sorry,” she said, offering up the silk. The girl tore it out of her fingers and ran back into the house without a word.

Emilia registered the tears leaking slowly but unceasingly down her face, and she realized she wasn’t crying for that brief moment of absolute freedom she’d felt while watching the kite, or even for the boy lying breathless and broken at her feet. She was crying for that strange little girl, who couldn’t cry for herself.