Published in the U.S. by Charlotte-based Falstaff Books (it will also be released in the United Kingdom), Hartley\u2019s current novel, Impervious<\/em>, is a young adult fantasy that shares similarities with earlier work. Like Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact<\/em>, named the 2012 Southern Independent Bookseller Association Young Adult Novel of the Year, the book\u2019s protagonist is yanked out of the ordinary \u201creal\u201d world and thrust into a monster-filled world of magic and mayhem. Like Steeplejack<\/em>, which won the 2017 International Thriller Writers Award for \u201cBest Young Adult Novel\u201d and the 2017 Manly Wade Wellman Award for North Carolina Science Fiction and Fantasy (among other accolades), the protagonist is a brave and intelligent young woman.<\/p>\n Unlike any previous novel, however, Impervious<\/em> is a response to a real-world event of profound and personal gravity to Hartley and the Charlotte community.<\/p>\n \u201cOn Tuesday, April 30th, 2019, I was on the campus of the university where I teach\u2014UNC Charlotte\u2014for an end of year celebration honoring graduating seniors, when a gunman opened fire in a neighboring building,\u201d Hartley writes in an afterword to the book. \u201cI took cover with a group of students in a theatre dressing room and we locked ourselves in\u2026By the time we got the all-clear from the police, two students had been killed and several others seriously wounded. The scars borne by the survivors are less easy to quantify.\u201d<\/p>\n In spite of the intense seriousness of that issue, Hartley says, \u201cit doesn\u2019t feel like an issue book until the very end. It feels like a fantasy-adventure.\u201d Trina Warren begins the novel as a regular student navigating her high school classes, unaware of the fact that before the final bell rings, she will have to defeat the \u201cSoulless One\u201d to save herself and her friends.<\/p>\n![\"Impervious](\"https:\/\/cws.charlotte.edu\/backup-coaa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/807\/2024\/06\/Impervious-Cover-5-web.png\")
Hartley says that he had been considering a story about a school shooting for years. The event on April 30 and his accompanying emotional journey \u2013 \u201chow calm I was through the experience,\u201d followed by, for example, panic attacks in the Harris Teeter \u2013 focused his attention on the topic. Dealing with the real-world issue of gun violence through his distinctive brand of literature became necessary.<\/p>\n