About this ebook
For Owen Bale, life in Great Falls, Montana, is good. He has a loving wife and son, a career as a writer, and plenty of reasons to get up in the morning.
The charmed existence ends one sun-kissed day when everyone in town—maybe everyone everywhere—drops dead. Owen is left alone in a city on fire.
The options now: sit tight and wait for help or seek out survivors. One thing’s certain: if Owen doesn’t move—and move fast—the stresses of the flash extinction will swallow him whole.
He sets out in search of people—and of the cause of the devastation. Cosmic cataclysms. Pandemics. Bio-warfare. Earth has been through five mass extinctions. How do they differ from what’s happened now? Maybe God was behind the carnage. Or little green men. Whatever the answer, why was Owen spared? And if he’s alive, it stands to reason others survived, too. If all people everywhere are in fact gone, will there be any point in going on?
Staying sane and strong in a hostile landscape filled with unexpected dangers would be easier if Owen’s own inner demons weren’t along for the journey. Finding the post-civilization promised land will take every ounce of courage and self-knowledge he can muster.
About the author
Steven Owad is an award-winning writer and editor living in Calgary, Canada. His novels have been praised in publications such as Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Kirkus Reviews, and his stage plays have been produced in theaters throughout North America.
In his previous life as a newspaper editor, Steven lived in Thailand and Poland, where he begged journalists not to use “impact” as a verb. Before that, there was a degree in English, with a lot of thousand-page Victorian novels. These days, shorter modern novels and plays are more his speed.
Steven loves the outdoors when there’s no risk of frostbite.