The Revivalists

  

I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: The Revivalists

Author: Christopher M. Hood

Publisher: Harper

Release Date: 10.4.22

Publisher’s Summary 

"The Revivalists is a thrilling, terrifying, surprising, and tender debut, written in such exquisitely precise prose that I felt singed by its imaginary fires and warmed by its beating heart. Chris Hood's nightmarish cross-country family odyssey is also one of the most beautiful love stories I've ever read."--Karen Russell, bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Orange World

A stunning debut novel about a couple's harrowing journey across a ravaged America to save their daughter.

Bill and Penelope are the lucky ones. Not only do they survive the Shark Flu emerging from the melting Icelandic permafrost to sweep like a scythe across the world, but they begin to rebuild a life in the wreckage of the old. A garden to feed themselves planted where the lawn used to be, a mattress pulled down to the living room fireplace for warmth. Even Bill's psychology practice endures the collapse of the social order, the handful of remaining clients bartering cans of food for their sessions. But when their daughter's voice over the radio in the kitchen announces that she's joined a cult three thousand miles away in Bishop, California, they leave it all behind to embark on a perilous trek across the hollowed-out remains of America to save her.

Their journey is an unforgettable odyssey through communities scattered across the continent, but for all the ways that the world has changed, the hopes and fears of this little family remain the same as they always have been. In The Revivalists, Christopher M. Hood creates a haunting, moving, darkly funny, and ultimately hopeful portrait of a world and a marriage tested by extraordinary circumstances.

My Review

A pandemic wipes out over half the world's population and almost all forms of modern technology and communication. Months later, a college-aged daughter in California reaches out to her parents in New York on the ham radio her father taught her to use to tell them that she's fine...and she's joining a cult. 

What would you do? 

The parents load up their car and head west, embarking on a brutal post-apocalyptic road trip to rival Alison Stine's Road Out of Winter, Meg Elison's Road to Nowhere series, and Cormac McCarthy's The Road.  Christopher M. Hood has widened the genre by not only dreaming up horrific new situations around every turn, but by showing what race, mental health, and agency could mean in a devastated America.