Caught in a Still Place

Caught in a Still Place, Jonathan Lerner, Xlibris Corp., 2001

This is an after-the-holocaust novel set on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Some sort of plague has killed almost everyone in America, leaving Julian, Jaydie, Miss Audrey, and a child named Sylvia living on oysters and beach peas. A family living a few miles away provides them with the occasional hunted duck. Before, it was an isolated sort of place where mail and electricity service was not totally reliable. One day, it stopped and never re-started, so it took a while for the four to realize that anything was Wrong.

They deal with the occasional traveler just passing through. The author only hints at the details of the plague, but it seemed a quick and painful death; "their skin just dissolved; fell away in patches."

The family decides to move into "town", where the four are living, creating a mini-population explosion. Julian's ex-lover, Richard, shows up, after walking out on the group sometime in the past; he is also noticeably sick. Julian and Jaydie (Jane), meantime, start to inch their way toward a relationship of their own.

This is a story of relationships, old and new. it's a very quiet, psychological sort of novel, and also a very short novel, about a totally changed society, and what can happen to the people in it. Here is an engrossing, well done story that is very much worth the reader's time.