The same night a famous actor dies of a heart attack while onstage as King Lear, the Georgia Flu--the epidemic that had been relatively contained in Russia and Georgia--arrives in North America. It's a highly-contagious, fast-moving, very deadly flu; once exposed, you're sick within hours and dead within days. 
 Twenty years later, the world is both irreparably changed and steadfastly rebuilding. The survivors--only about 1% of the population--have clustered in small settlements. The Traveling Symphony circles through the Midwest, bringing music and Shakespeare to the outposts of civilization. Arriving back at a favorite location, intending to pick up two of their actors and their baby, they instead find a changed town now run by the Prophet, who does not let his flock go easily. 
 The story moves fluidly across time periods, filling in backstory and showing the collapse from a variety of perspectives. I don't know what to say about this book--it's compelling, it's heartbreaking, it's unrelenting in the way that only a rough existence can be. 
 I'm in the minority in finding a lot of these post-apocalyptic stories hopeful, or at least not devoid of hope: yes, it is a changed world; it is one that is difficult to navigate and individual survival is not guaranteed. But to me, there is a sort of hope to these stories: humanity, on the whole, is surviving, and rebuilding. People are still helping each other, coming together and creating a new society. People are still having children, still surviving and finding meaning in this new world. They're still creating families and networks and connections. It's tragic that 99% of the population was killed by this flu. But for that remaining 1%, life is continuing, and they're making of it everything they can. They're still able to start again. A post-apocalyptic world isn't the hopeless end; it's the resilient beginning.