Earth Abides

 

This seems the perfect time to re-read this book, written in 1949. I read it during college, but remembered very little of it. The character Isherwood Williams ("Ish") is in the mountains for some "time away." He is bitten by a snake and ends up in his cabin for a couple of weeks, recovering from the snake bite and some sort of illness. When he returns to civilization, he discovers that there has been a massive pandemic and everybody is dead. He is able to get food, a better car, gasoline, etc. by taking what has been abandoned. He settles in his family home in Berkeley and then drives across the country, finding other individuals or small groups who have survived. Returning to Berkeley. he continues to explore and finds, first, a woman with whom he partners, and then a handful of others who have also survived. Together, this small group start a tribe, with the birth of babies and learning how to deal with what has been left behind and how to cope when, for example, the electricity goes off and the water no longer flows.

The book takes you from the first days, when Ish is in his 20s, to his death as an old man and all of the changes that happen to society when all the familiar things are no more (e.g., he has access to the UC Berkeley library, but he is the only one who knows how to read and the children aren't interested in learning).

This is an interesting look at the start of civilizations and how they learn to live. There is also a lot about how the land itself changes as the years pass without human intervention. Makes one glad COVID-19 isn't worse than it is.