Two survivors of a nuclear apocalypse and plague, Rebeca and Mary, realize that their collection of books may be the last bastion of human knowledge left in the world. They set out to preserve their treasure, but everything changes when an explorer from a colony of religious fundamentalists arrives. His coming leads to a clash between religion and science leading one character to do almost anything to destroy the books that challenge her biblical view of the world.

A good read for anyone that loves books and knowledge, some however, may be put off by the slightly negative depiction of religion. ( )

This is the story of a group of post nuclear war survivors. It's told from the point of view of one of the two original occupents of the farm now occupied by a group religious zealots. Mary Hope is telling her life experiences to one of the young people in hopes that he will keep the quest for knowledge alive. Mary and her friend Rachel have gathered books and created a storage place to preserve them for the future. Mary finds a survivor from a religious community and then returns with him to their compound. Mary will not comform to their dogma and returns to the farm. Eventually remnants of the religious group make their way to the farm. Dogma and independence again clash with stored books at the center.

This book was hard to get into at first, but it ended up being a very compeling story. It makes one think about how drastic life would change following such a catastrophe and how quickly civilization would descend into another dark age. ( )

This was an interesting book. It is not my "type" of genre in the sense of "last of earth's survivors." I did enjoy the book preservation aspects. A little too gloomy for me. But the writing was pretty good. ( )

This is a very well-written story of nuclear apocalypse and the aftermath for a handful of survivors. The main characters -- two independent, intelligent women -- are extremely well drawn, and the drama is compelling. My real objection is the simplistic contrast drawn between characters who are religious (and therefore portrayed as irrational and naive, and in some cases crazy) and those who are non-religious (and portrayed as wise and enlightened). It's a fault of much science fiction, but for me this is a considerable flaw that gets in the way of an otherwise excellent story. ( )

I read this years ago, remembered the plot and characters, but couldn't remember the title or author. Searched every used bookstore, Amazon, etc. and finally found it in my neighborhood used book store. Even better reading the second time around. ( )