Remnants of Love

The future is here, and it’s not pretty.

All of the survivors of a national catastrophe have grouped into communes or holed up in the mountains as hermits. Communication as we know it is non-existent, lawlessness abounds, and the only authority is that of the gun. Widowed old -timers Kenny and Norville are wily, though, and manage to make a living with the rations they’ve stored, but run into more danger than they can imagine when they meet up with a party of advance scouts for a large group of militia moving their way. Meanwhile, Terry, a young man from one of the communes, makes a startling discovery and heads out into the wilds to see if he can find someone to confirm his theory. In the process, he rescues a young woman, Stella, who was held captive; they travel together for safety, trying to avoid the obsessed weirdo who is after Stella and get to Kenny’s house alive.

Remnants of Love by Kenneth Baker is more a social commentary, a Postman-styled “what if” story detailing what could happen if the American economy collapsed. Well-crafted and fast-paced, Remnants follows several main characters and the struggles and trials that they go through, hitting all of the highs and lows of human nature. This book also explores the cyclical ebb and flow of the back-story of society, with its most telling lines (for this reviewer) being: “Humans have a tragic way of repeating history. All the history books show this. I've always said that if humanity is destroyed, we will do it to ourselves.”

Reviewed by: Michelle