The Shelter Cycle

Like Rock's last title, My Abandonment, this quietly assured new work deals with people on society's edge. Francine and Colville are friends who grew up in the Church Universal and Triumphant, adherents of the Violet Flame. Members believed in the coming apocalypse and the possibility of Soviet air strikes, building underground bunkers to protect themselves. But nothing happened, and the community broke up, leaving the two friends to negotiate the larger world on their own. Now married and pregnant, Francine is searching for a girl gone missing from her Idaho town when Colville shows up, claiming that the news of the girl—and advice from a raccoon—has led him to Francine. Colville may be crazy in a calm, collected way (he temporarily makes off with the family dog, while Francine's husband, Wells, reads through diaries in an effort to understand Francine's past), but he and Francine seem less damaged than dissociated, the legacy of their odd upbringing. After Colville's visit, Francine is launched on her own exploration of the past, with the book's many storylines resolving in an unexpected way.