California

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, July 2014: What does a marriage look like after the world ends? Edan Lepucki's terrific first novel California finds itself concerned with the human element when society crumbles. The post-apocalypse is beside the point. It hardly matters how we got here; all that matters is what we do next. For Cal and Frida, that becomes a tougher question when Frida discovers she's pregnant. They've survived on their own in the lush, solitary wilderness, but decide with one more mouth to feed, they may fare better within the safety of a small community. As they integrate into a nearby settlement, the couple realizes that they may have traded the hazards of the outside world for the paranoia and mistrust of other people. California questions the role of family and responsibility, and as a portrait of marriage, is perhaps as incisive as anything set in the real world. And with the conviction with which Lepucki renders the realities of her novel, it might behoove us to think of our world as the pre-apocalypse. --Kevin Nguyen

Edan Lepucki is a graduate of Oberlin College and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and her short fiction has been published in Narrative Magazine, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Meridian, FiveChapters, and McSweeney's, among others. She is a staff writer for The Millions and teaches creative writing at the UCLA Extension Writers' Program and for Writing Workshops Los Angeles, which she founded.