Thirst
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
On a searing summer Friday, Eddie Chapman has been stuck for hours in a traffic jam. There are accidents along the highway, but ambulances and police are conspicuously absent. When he decides to abandon his car and run home, he sees that the trees along the edge of a stream have been burnt, and the water in the streambed is gone. Something is very wrong.
When he arrives home, the power is out and there is no running water. The pipes everywhere, it seems, have gone dry. Eddie and his wife, Laura, find themselves thrust together with their neighbors while a sense of unease thickens in the stifling night air.
Thirst takes place in the immediate aftermath of a mysterious disaster--the Chapmans and their neighbors suffer the effects of the heat, their thirst, and the terrifying realization that no one is coming to help. As violence rips through the community, Eddie and Laura are forced to recall secrets from their past and question their present humanity. In crisp and convincing prose, Ben Warner compels readers to do the same. What might you do to survive?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Warner's debut novel is the story of a young married couple, Eddie and Laura Chapman, and their fight for survival after a mysterious power outage and the sudden, inexplicable absence of drinkable water. Eddie is caught in traffic when the disaster strikes; he decides to abandon his car and run the rest of the distance home. He encounters an unexpectedly dry streambed along the way, the first sign that something has gone terribly wrong, and when he finally makes it home, the full extent of the dire situation becomes clear. He's reunited with Laura and a few other neighbors who decide to wait for help instead of heading into the city. They all slowly succumb to a desperate thirst that threatens to unravel them both mentally and physically. The fight for water becomes increasingly desperate, and neighbors battle over resources with disastrous consequences. With a tight focus and a steadily increasing tension, the novel explores the limits of what we would give up of our humanity in order to survive. Warner achieves a chillingly claustrophobic atmosphere in which everything in the outside world becomes a threat. But in a market overflowing with post-apocalyptic stories, the novel never achieves the originality that it promises at the beginning, and the specific cause of the disaster remains frustratingly oblique.
