BLACKOUT TRAIL

A resourceful, globe-trotting physician aids a stranded father and daughter on a 1,000-mile trek to reunite their family in Naughton’ post-apocalyptic novel.

At Pittsburgh International Airport, Anna Hastings, a doctor, is speaking with her sister when her phone suddenly goes dead. Everyone else’s does, too, and the lights and electric buzz of the terminal fall silent, leaving a stunned silence just before the planes begin falling out of the sky. She struggles to keep pace with the emergency unfolding around her, helping free engineer Mark Ryan from beneath fallen debris while his young daughter, Lily, looks on in terror. As the crisis settles, Mark explains his theory that an electromagnetic pulse has permanently disabled devices with microchips. As Anna tries to decide what to do in a strange city far from home, her new friend reveals an unlikely plan: to rendezvous with his wife, Lauren, in Maine by way of a 1,000-mile hiking trail, with 7-year-old Lily in tow. For reasons not even Anna fully understands, she volunteers to come along, braving harsh weather, treating injuries once easily managed but now potentially fatal, and confronting the desperation and violence of people in a world stripped of order. Using first-person narration, Naughton grounds the story in a strong and capable but increasingly conflicted protagonist. Anna and her companions encounter only occasional threats from others—a ragtag band of “gangers,” a sadistic sniper, and desperate looters. Instead, the narrative focuses on the routines of the trail, where the group contends with bad weather, fatigue, and arguments. The novel’s tension centers largely on the ethical dilemmas Anna faces in this new status quo, from reconciling her Hippocratic oath with having to protect herself to confronting her growing attachment to a married man. Readers expecting nonstop action may find the pace subdued, but the quieter approach allows the novel to explore moral questions and the intimate human consequences of a world suddenly made smaller.

A character-driven trek through a quieter apocalypse, rich in moral questions if light on spectacle.