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Overview
The Last Wanderer. An unnamed young college professor goes on a summer adventure in northern Canada alone when the highly interdependent world comes apart and he is unable to return to find his sister and uncle after two years of fires and nuclear meltdown leading to nuclear winter and the death of almost all the inhabitants of the earth that he has known.
The unnamed wanderer returns to the Indianhead country of Wisconsin and finds no trace of those who he has lost. While finding wildlife are making a comeback, he finds no one alive and begins salvaging supplies and vehicles to begin his search for a safe place to live and find other survivors of fire, starvation, radiation, and disease. Instead, he finds a new Peterbilt 579 tractor with a sleeper that provides not only a safe place to sleep at night, but a means of traveling the interstate highways in search of others, like him, who may have survived somehow, what had killed all of the others.
The wanderer's lonely trip across country finds an unlikely old hermit, Charlie Weaver, and they bond in their effort to improve their lots and search for others, but Charlie is dying of lung cancer and there's nothing that the wanderer can do to save his life from ebbing to a close. The wanderer must go on alone.
The wanderer's search for warm winter quarters takes him to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where he happens on another survivor, a teenage girl named Lisa Adams who survived because her father took such care to save her that it cost him his own life. Lisa, immediately falls in love with the wanderer in her own, naïve way. It isn't long before they are expecting a child and have found another survivor, Oscar Bradley. But Oscar, like Charlie, is dying from radiation exposure cancer and meets the same fate. Lisa's fetus is also affected, resulting in a stillbirth. And the stillbirth of their daughter leads to Lisa's death from that ill-fated accident and hemorrhaging.
Depressed and utterly alone, the wanderer is consoled by a capuchin monkey that the wanderer names Charlie after his friend and they travel the country looking for more survivors. Along the way, he saves a small German Shepherd mix puppy and names him, Rocky. Rocky and Charlie become helpful and loyal companions in the wanderer's travels. Twice, survivors are found, but they are hostile and the wanderer is unable to make contact. And then, like a miracle, the wanderer finds a commune with 47 people that have survived well, only to have them lost by a predictable, but tragic, natural disaster.
Left alone without hope and with the southern United States becoming more tropical and uninhabitable, the wanderer retreats to northern Ontario where he stayed the first two winters and where he finally lives out his life to a surprising conclusion.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781644385463 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Booklocker.com, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 03/20/2019 |
| Pages: | 324 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.68(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Prologue
1 - How We Got Here
2 - The Stage Is Set
3 - In Happy Isolation the World Turns Sour
4 - My Rush Home Begins
5 - Terror Comes to Turtle Lake
6 - Rescue Thwarted, Delayed and Failed
7 - Long Lonely Slog South
8 - You Can't Go Home
9 - Road Danger and a New Ride
10 - Strange Things Spell Danger
11 - Little America
12 - Survivor
13 - War No More
14 - Trouble on the Road
15 - End of the Road for One
16 - Girding for Winter in Paradise
17 - Winter in Paradise
18 - Desert Dessert
19 - Exotic Surprise
20 - Ghastly Revelation
21 - Alligator Alley Cannibals
22 - Water, Water, Everywhere
23 - Realization
24 - Genesis Discovered
25 - Genesis Conceived
26 - Genesis Replanting
27 - Genesis Unfolding
28 - Yellowstone and Beyond
29 - Hot Springs Surprises
30 - Quandary Settled
31 - Winter Comes Down Hard
32 - Healing Lisa
33 - Getting Milk
34 - Genesis Lost
35 - Leaving Loss Behind
36 - Horror Revealed in the East
37 - Telltale Tracks
38 - Wide Open Spaces Traces
39 - Failed Contact
40 - Land of Milk and Plenty
41 - Big Tree Bear and Wino Heaven
42 - Fire, Feral and Flood
43 - The New Normal
44 - Return to Hot Springs
45 - Monkey Business
46 - Tragic Tracks
47 - End of the Line
48 - Finding Companionship in Disillusionment
49 - Stocking Up for Winter
50 - Land of Plenty of Danger
51 - The Heartland
52 - New Hope Found
53 - New Hope Revealed
54 - New Hope Lost
55 - Retreat
56 - Planning for the Inevitable
57 - Life at Fort Hood
58 - The Push North into Tragedy
59 - Total Breakdown in Dangerous Country
60 - Treacherous Waters
61 - Conquering Superior and Beyond
62 - Wilderness Challenge
63 - Hudson Bay Surprises
64 - Smooth Sailing with a Bad Eye
65 - Making Home My Home
66 - The Long Haul
Epilogue
About the Author