and "A genre-breaking road novel in a dystopian future. Heart-breaking. Scary. Profound." - Tom Zoellner, winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction."A rare examination of the human condition in a post-apocalyptic world. Combines the rawness of McCarthy's The Road with the grace of Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard." - Tom Joyce, award winning author of The Missing PeaceA Hero's Journey through Dystopia, 2055 AD: For better and for worse, the full-on world war of the late 2020s and the collapse of nations and societies it caused, crushed every human hope and strategy. Only the crafty and the violent survived. Two decades later, Vermont doctor Zhampa DiOrio discovers a box holding two ancient scepters - hand-made, of gold and silver. They trigger boyhood memories of Zhampa's mentor, an old Tibetan lama. Like the time he pointed the scepters at a stream and the water stopped, then ran uphill.The lama also left Zhampa a letter. Though he died before The Unraveling, he correctly predicted every stage of the chaos. More troubling is that he commands Zhampa to return the scepters to a monastery in the Himalayas where their power is needed to build a world free of war. He's included a pathetic, hand-drawn map.Zhampa has huge doubts about the magic, about what he saw. But the promise of alleviating human suffering even a little drives him to risk everything. With three tough friends - a woman and two men - he sets out west on foot across their post-apocalyptic world. Because all outsiders are seen as threats, they give wide berth to hardscrabble villages when they can. Still, his band gets crossways with tribes, cults, and unseen alliances. And wild souls think they own the roads.Because they will eventually lose a confrontation with guns, they travel unarmed, relying on intuition, non-aggression, and teamwork. And Zhampa's medical skills open many gates. They negotiate when they can, and they run when they have to. They find pockets of grace. But death rides shotgun, clever about whom it takes . . . and how.The landscapes and the ocean they face are vast, poetic, and deadly. The awareness they have that every day in this Dark Age could be their last binds their camaraderie. And for all mankind, they each vow to complete this hero's journey if the others in their band are taken early.