Love in the Time of the Apocalypse

Gregory Blecha's rare fusion of brilliance, heart, and humor comes to life in this satirical novel that defies genre by simultaneously managing to be a moving and unadulterated love story. The narrative style evokes Kim Stanley Robinson's futuristic sci-fi classic Pacific Edge and its they-could-be-my-neighbors realism, as well as the headlong rush of The Da Vinci Code's opening chapters (a pace maintained here from beginning to end). Yet Blecha's voice is unequivocally his own. He captures human flaws and failings with bull's-eye farce but also with benevolence and hope. And his vision of the strange bedfellows in the United States' future is uniquely provocative - I may be laughing, but I'm also stocking my underground bunker. Love in the Time of the Apocalypse is dedicated in part to the author's late brother Bryan - also the name of the novel's hapless yet intrepid, indefatigable, and surprising protagonist. I can only imagine that the real Bryan would be proud to live on in his trouble-prone and endearing namesake who, even as the world plummets toward disaster, keeps on believing in the love that conquers all - including the apocalypse.