A mordantly funny all-too-real novel in the vein of Tom Perotta and Emma Straub about a
suburban American family who have to figure out how to survive themselves and their neighbors
in the wake of a global calamity that upends all of modern life.It's Tuesday morning in
Lincolnwood New Jersey and all four members of the Altman family are busy ignoring each other
en route to work and school. Dan a lawyer turned screenwriter is preoccupied with satisfying
his imperious TV producer boss's creative demands. Seventeen-year-old daughter Chloe obsesses
over her college application essay and the state tennis semifinals. Her vape-addicted little
brother Max silently plots revenge against a thuggish freshman classmate. And their
MBA-educated mom Jen who gave up a successful business career to raise the kids is counting
the minutes until the others vacate the kitchen and she can pour her first vodka of the
day.Then as the kids begin their school day and Dan rides a commuter train into Manhattan the
world comes to a sudden inexplicable stop. Lights phones laptops cars trains...the entire
technological infrastructure of 21st-century society quits working. Normal life as the Altmans
and everyone else knew it is over.Or is it?Over four transformative chaotic days this
privileged but clueless American family will struggle to hold it together in the face of water
shortages paramilitary neighbors and the well-mannered looting of the local Whole Foods as
they try to figure out just what the hell is going on.
