By Peter Heller

I found this book to be extremely moving.  While the story is both grim and bleak, it is also wondrously hopeful and beautifully written. The story is about love, courage, and finding one’s home.  It is written from the main character, Hig’s, perspective in short segments.  While the first part of the book moves at a moderate pace, the last half moves quite quickly. 

Hig is a pilot who flies a 1956 Cessna and has survived nine years since the epidemic which has killed off most of the population.  He lives with his dog, Jasper, and another man who goes by the name of Bangley.  While Hig occasionally checks in on families suffering from a blood disease,  Bangley and Hig defend their territory from everyone else that comes near.  The world has become a cruel place, with a focus upon survival.  Hig’s story is about trying to live, not just survive.

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012

Genres: General fiction, dystopian

Format: Hardback

ISBN: 9780307959942

Audience: Adult

Number of pages: 320

Setting: Colorado

Time period: In the future – around 2036

Subject headings:

From Pima County Public Library:

End of the world — Fiction.

Survival — Fiction.

Similar works:

The Pesthouse  by Jim Crace

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Age of Miracles: a Novel by Karen Thompson Walker