Avis Afterward: A Utopian Fiction Kindle Edition

by JB Cline (Author)  

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Every new world starts from the destruction of the old one, but the beginnings are humble and not what you think.

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Avis Johnson is nobody special. She's a clerk in a law firm dodging layoffs. Socially awkward, she’s obsessed with lists, files, and calendars, living alone in a suburban townhouse, obsessing over her relationship with her grown sons. Then everything changes. Avis is struck down by a shock, and when she wakes up, everyone else is dead by some unknown force. In the first few days, she discovers a small handful of other survivors: an infant, a four-year-old and his dog, and a plumber passed out in an aisle at the local Walmart. The destruction around them is both devastating and inexplicable, not just the dead bodies, but the silence and loneliness it engenders.

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When Hector the plumber suggests that they leave Avis's home in search of a better place to live, she refuses. Avis is determined to keep what she has, raise the surviving children, and wait for the return of her two sons. She's convinced beyond reason that she'll see them again, and within the year, another child mysteriously appears, claiming to be her grandson.

 

What does a clerk do in the face of unspeakable catastrophe? She starts with this handful of survivors, pulls them all together, and leads everyone on the painstaking quest to a whole new existence.