There is no one left alive...I know, because after the war ended, and all the telephones went dead, my family went...to see what was happening. They never came back...
Ann Burden is sixteen and, as far as she knows, the only person left in the world. The nuclear radiation that destroyed the rest of the world has not touched the valley where she lives, and so she has remained, surviving as best she knows, for the past year.
The smoke from a distant campfire shatters Ann's solitude. Someone else is still alive and making his way toward the valley: John Loomis, a scientist, protected from the radiation by a "safe-suit". He asserts his will almost immediately. And as his behavior becomes more and more extreme – finally culminating in a violent confrontation – Ann must choose how she will live, in a world unlike any she has known.
Utdrag ur boken:
It was a feeling that had been growing on me, and bothering me more each day since he fist began to recover. I had realized that I did not know him at all. When he had first come, I had been so excited and apprehensive about the presence of any other person that I did not think too much about who Mr. Loomis was; he had seemed attractive and friendly. But since his recovery, I had felt that I did not understand him at all.
Nedskrivet av Salamis