Beautifully realized, with solid characters, but unoriginal, obvious, implausible, obtrusively symbolic, and far too slow in the development: more admirable than practical. So, Mary must hide and guard Rachel's legacy, an eclectic library of whatever books survived the numerous disasters, and also educate Stephen-a young, intelligent, thoughtful boy who will someday become patriarch-in the truth of the past with its miracles and failures, and the necessity for tolerance. Miriam decrees that all books other than the Bible are evil and must be destroyed. As the years pass, and the community of Amarna takes shape, Mary's principal adversary in the struggle to win the hearts and minds of future generations becomes Miriam-the spectacularly beautiful, intolerant, Bible-thumping, iron-willed mistress of the religious flock.

Eventually, some other survivors show up these turn out to be religious fanatics who interpret the Bible literally and believe in nothing else. The subsistence farm Amarna is inhabited by two courageous survivors-writer Mary Hope and her artist friend Rachel Morrow together they endure the fallout, the gangs, diseases, earthquakes, and nuclear winter. In the near future, a series of disasters reduces the world to rubble: nuclear war, a Lassa fever pandemic, a huge earthquake that destroys most of California, and gangs of lunatic vandals to finish off the remainder. ( Mar.Post-apocalypse/dying-of-the-light yarn set in coastal Oregon, from the author of paperback science-fiction tales and mysteries. Wren's (the Phoenix trilogy) post-nuclear world rings true, as do her compelling depictions of the subsistence-level daily life-the triumphs, the losses and the desperation. A bitter struggle develops between Mary and a strong-willed young Arkite for the minds of the children, particularly the boy destined to lead the next generation. Years later, when plague strikes the Arkites, Mary agrees to take in the few survivors on condition that she be allowed to educate the children as she sees fit. As they struggle through the Long Winter following the End, as the nuclear disaster is simply called, their desolation is succeeded by a determination to collect and preserve for a new civilization the great books of Western culture. Mary marries and briefly joins the Arkites but leaves after the leader calls Rachel a witch. 'Writer Mary Hope and Rachel Morrow, a painter, eke out a meager existence at a farm on the Oregon coast. Down the coast is another set of survivors, the Arkites, a fundamentalist group that denies all knowledge not contained in the Bible. Writer Mary Hope and Rachel Morrow, a painter, eke out a meager existence at a farm on the Oregon coast. Unsparing but ultimately hopeful, this elegiac novel, set in the near future, traces the first generations to survive nuclear war and ensuing plagues.

A Gift Upon the Shore by M.K. Wren