Reed and Connie Renner, a young couple on the verge of divorce, return from fourteen months isolated in the Pacific Ocean to discover a world mired in desperation. Some event, speculated to be the test detonation of an extremely dirty nuclear bomb, has killed off nearly every woman on the planet of childbearing age. Those who survived are for some unknown reason unable to conceive, and are placed under heavy guard by their governments in an effort to preserve them from hordes of desperate, lonely men. A top lawyer, Reed soon finds himself working for a government desperately trying to hold off the collapse of a society without a future, where his actions soon draw the ire of a powerful mobster who is willing to stop at nothing to get to Reed – and his beautiful wife.

Day Keene (the pseudonym of Gunnard Hjerststedt) was a writer best known in the 1950s and 1960s for the crime fiction he wrote. This collaboration with Leonard Pruyn was his only foray into science fiction, which is unfortunate considering how well he writes. His novel is a fascinating look at the impact of gendercide upon a population, one with some interesting and well-thought-out details. His literary roots are evident in the efficient prose, tight plotting, and focus on the criminal underside, which finds its own way to profit in a changed world. Fifty years later, it still holds up well as a moving tale of a slowly unfolding apocalypse, one in which sane people struggle against the odds to hold onto hope. ( )