When the world economies collapsed, Gus's wife was on vacation with her sisters in Germany. Beth and Jimmy were on their honeymoon at Gus's fishing lodge in the mountains of Washington state. They were determined to get back home to Tennessee, 2400 miles away. The task seemed impossible, but they decided to try. Ellen was at college in Omaha, when she tried to get home she was carjacked and left stranded in Rockport, Missouri. She was stranded over 500 miles from home.
I found this to be pretty realistic in some ways though somewhat simplistic in the telling. My belief is that a journey of this distance in such dire times would prove to be much more difficult. I did enjoy the lack of profanity and vulgar language found in other books of this type. I will read more from this author.
I would have thought there would have been a few more warning signs of an economic collapse than there appeared to be, though I also think if such a think happened, it would be fast from "oh oh" to "oh dear". I do like the premise of the book and the refreshing fact that it is a standalone. There were a lot of writing errors in word usage, punctuation and the dialogue, in particular, felt stiff. All of that would have been a solid 3 stars, but I must admit that I liked the story and the characters. They were fairly one-dimensional but at least likable. It was also nice there were more random good guys than bad ones, though I think there would be many that were not religiously-affiliated too. All in all, it was a fun book to read.
Fantastic job of writing about the post apocalypse. I think it's more realistic than some. I love to think that people would be more likely to act as portrayed in this novel, but I don't want to find out.