LIVING THE AFTER TIMES

The Environmental Shift has come and gone, leaving the planet Earth elementally cleansed of much of man's indignities. With this cleansing, so went most of the human race, most, but not all. This is the story of those who survived the cataclysmic era known as the Environmental Shift and the struggles the future generations face while living in an age regarded only as the After Times. Soon after the death of his father, Peter Ravens, a child born and raised in the era known only as "the After Times" sets out on a journey of discovery. For though Peter is certain his parents have given him a proper education, he inherently knows he's lived a rather cloistered existence on their family ranch in Montana. Since the conveniences of electricity, telecommunication or motor driven vehicles no longer exist; he's acutely aware that his knowledge of the world is contained within the confines of the ranch and the vast community surrounding it. Knowing this, Peter departs the ranch in his horse drawn wagon, a small school bus he and his father converted when Peter was young, stripping its short chassis of all its motorized machinations, leaving the shell to be modified into a small yet comfortable living space. Once on the road, Peter meets up with an old traveler named Coy-dog, a man born in the Before Times, who struggled through to survive the Environmental Shift and is now wandering the crumbling roads of the After Times as an aging nomad on horseback. Tentatively agreeing to travel with one another, Coy-dog begins telling Peter his interpretations of the last three very defining eras of human existence, much of which Peter had never heard of. Within these tellings, Peter surprisingly begins to learn more about his own father and some of the integral moments he had once played in the Before Times, a time long before Peter's own birth. Before the two are able to travel far enough south to avoid the oncoming winter, a blizzard strikes, stranding them in a small tunnel where they are forced into creating a viable shelter to survive the winter until the early thaw of spring. Separately, we are also introduced to a female character named Dragonfly, whose upbringing is chronicled from the time of her abandonment by her parents in the metropolitan remnants of Denver, Colorado - known know only as Mile High - to when as a young woman is unduly exiled from Mile High by vindictive characters of her own Clan. We follow her solo experiences on the road until she eventually meets up with Peter Ravens as he scavenges for supplies in the abandoned town she is living in. It is also there that the first novel ends and its sequel will begin, tentatively entitled "A Tribe of Three".