Really awesome book for anyone who loves post-apocalyptic stories, survivalist stories, or who just appreciates the power of books. Set in Oregon, and has horses, dogs, and nuclear war. What more do you need? ( )

I'm a sucker for end of the world stories. This one wasn't bad. Two women survive on an Oregon valley farm and preserve books as a tenuous link to the future after plague and nuclear war. Fundamentalists also survive. The story was engaging, but maybe I've read too many end of the world stories. I felt like I'd read other versions of it already. Am I just jaded to the apocalypse? (January 03, 2004) ( )

Tells the story (and the story of the story) of Rachel and Mary, who literally decide to survive the end of the world, in order to preserve (again literally) the books that represent what's left of their civilization. It is told half in flashbacks of that end time and half from the first person perspective of Mary, who now lives with a group of fundamentalist Christians, who believe there is only truth and one book worth reading. The villian of the story is a woman who takes this belief to its "logical" and lethal conclusion--her character is that perfect combination of traits, utter ignorance of history and science and the unwavering conviction that the one idea in her head is the whole and unimpeachable truth. Sound familiar? She is a caricature to be sure, and there is one other character in the book as extreme as she is, and it is Mary's conviction, and the theme of the book, that this is a form of insanity and ultimately evil. There's nothing subtle about the treatment of this theme in the book, but the other characters in it are more three-dimensional and sympathetic than the two crackpots, and the relationships between them and Mary are more complex and nuanced. The flashbacks to the apocalypse are appropriately horrific and tragic, and the glue that holds the book together is the character of Rachel, an atheist who represents everything one could ask of a friend and helper through the end of the world, or any other troubles. To call it simply a battle between religious lunacy and agnostic sanity would be an over simplification, but that's the thrust of the book, at least the parts that deal with Mary's "present." All of that said, it is beautifully written, with an almost unbearable sense of what is lost and a powerful belief in what is worth preserving. I'd recommend it to any fan of these kinds of books. ( )

Rachel takes Mary into her home and together they live through the end. Day by day they endure. Until Rachel comes up with a plan: they will preserve the thousands of books they've scavenged, their gift to the future. With this, they start to live.

Forty years in the future, Mary takes on an apprentice and tells him the story, Rachel's story. And with this conflict in the community in which she lives comes to a head. Some ultra-religious members, steeped in their own brand of post-apocalyptic Christianity, think the knowledge Mary shares and saves is wrong.

This book is about the difference between surviving and living. It's about what should be preserved after the ending of the world as we know it. It's about the ending of civilization and the choice of how to rebuild. And it's about an amazing gift of love left by two women for future generations.


Provided by NetGalley ( )

A mostly calm and quiet book with horrendous incidents. It is made more horrifying for those of us currently having to live in a culture sculptured increasingly to the tastes of Christian fundamentalists.
I'm not in general a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction and this wasn't one of the exceptions for me for all that it is well structured and well written. ( )