The Revivalists
A Novel
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2.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hood sets his stark and hopeful debut in the aftermath of a pandemic that has wiped out two-thirds of the planet's population. Bill, a white psychologist, and Penelope, his Black financier wife, are living a placid life in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., when the shark flu, a deadly virus that emerged from Iceland's melting permafrost, upends civilization and cuts them off from their daughter, Hannah, a college student in California. After Hannah contacts them by shortwave radio (the only form of long-distance communication left) to tell them she's joined the Revival, a quasi-religious cult that demands renunciation of one's family, Bill and Penelope trek across America's decimated landscape to rescue her. Hood's narrative follows the familiar pattern of many postapocalyptic narratives, with Bill and Penelope crossing the paths of a broad cross-section of fellow survivors in encounters both benign and dangerous. Though their near escapes often feel convenient, Hood offers wry commentary on the new social order (the government's approving euphemism for looting, "Manage Existing Resources," is still seen as looting when done by Black people), as well as enriching insights on the fault lines in Bill and Penelope's marriage. As disaster fare, it's run of the mill, but it works better as an affecting family drama.
