Ash’s Cabin

The Prince and the Dressmaker author Jen Wang spins a sensitive narrative about an alienated teen who leaves modern society for the California wilderness to start a new life away from human kind.

Ash has always felt alone. Adults ignore the climate crisis. Other kids Ash’s age are more interested in popularity contests than in fighting for change. The only person who seemed to understand how desperate things were was Ash's grandpa, Edwin.

Before he died, Edwin used to talk about building a secret cabin, off the grid in the California wilderness. And to Ash, that maybe-mythical cabin is starting to feel like the perfect place for a fresh start and an escape from the miserable feeling of alienation that haunts their daily life.

But making the wilds your home isn’t easy. And as much as Ash wants to be alone . . . can they really be happy alone? Can they survive alone?

From New York Times–bestselling author and illustrator Jen Wang comes a singularly affecting
story about self-discovery, self-reliance, and the choice to live when it feels like you have no place in the world.

Jen Wang is the award-winning NYT Bestselling author and illustrator of several graphic novels for young readers including Stargazing, The Prince and The Dressmaker, In Real Life (co-written with Cory Doctorow), and Koko Be Good. Jen's honors include two Eisner Awards, the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Children's Literature Award, and the Fauve d’Angoulême Youth Award. She is based in Los Angeles and is a co-founder and organizer for Comic Arts LA.

“Ash’s Cabin is a beautiful book. Jen Wang does amazing work in deftly contrasting Ash’s interior journey in their relationship with a hostile external world. It’s a gorgeous meditation on fear, loneliness, and building a place to feel at home in your own heart.” —Trung Le Nguyen, creator of The Magic Fish

“Heart-wrenching and powerful, Ash’s Cabin sucked me in and I couldn’t stop until I got to the end. Ash’s story couldn’t be more relevant today. I just loved it.” —Tillie Walden, Eisner Award–winning creator of Spinning

“A fierce and tender story about the lengths you will go to connect in a way that matters, during a time in your life when those connections feel so hard. Timely, empathetic, and masterfully drawn, exactly what Jen Wang has always excelled at.” —Kate Beaton, #1 New York Times–bestselling creator of Hark! A Vagrant and Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands.

"Wang masterfully adapts this storyline for contemporary audiences, seamlessly weaving questions of identity, gender, race (Ash has Chinese and Irish ancestry), and climate change into this fundamental tale of survival. Searing and radiant." — Kirkus, starred review

"Wang (Stargazing) delivers a stunning, contemplative wilderness adventure via muted earth-tone watercolors that tackles head-on the present-day experience of living in what often feels like a time of apocalyptic change." —Publisher's Weekly, starred review