The Leftovers is a 2011 novel by American author Tom Perrotta chronicling life on Earth after a rapture-like event takes some and leaves others behind.
[1] Years after a rapture-like event in which millions of people worldwide vanish without explanation, the citizens of Mapleton still struggle to cope with the massive loss and resulting culture shift.
Kevin stresses the importance of returning to normalcy as a way for everyone to cope, through initiatives like survivors’ mixers and adult recreation leagues.
Another major policy of his tenure is easing tension between the town and the Guilty Remnant (GR), an ascetic religious group that aims to provoke people into remembering the losses of the event and how meaningless life is.
Kevin’s wife leaves him to join the Guilty Remnant, and he struggles to balance raising his daughter actively while respecting her privacy in dealing with the event and the breakdown of the Garvey family.
Their relationship falls apart on Valentine's Day, when Kevin breaks a convention of their arrangement by sharing personal feelings about his family, which upsets Nora.
She writes a letter to Kevin, explaining why she ran from him, and admitting ambivalence towards her family the exact moment they disappeared, which had been a source of her guilt and anger.
Opting to hand-deliver the letter instead of mailing it, Nora discovers an infant left on the Garvey doorstep, instantly bonding with the child just as Kevin returns from his game.
Laurie is asked to serve Kevin divorce papers to gain access to half the family assets – the means by which the GR can afford to maintain operations.
Laurie and Meg are “promoted” and given an outpost, which is a four-person dwelling with many of the comforts they lacked in Guilty Remnant dorms like privacy, better food, a hot tub, soft beds, and less supervision.
Laurie's daughter, Jill, comes across the scene after the murder and the GR has ordered a program in which one outpost member is commanded to kill the other as a “sacrament”.
Laurie and Meg grow closer living in the outpost alone, sharing the same bed and developing a nonsexual yet romantic domestic union.
Jill, Kevin and Laurie's daughter, is a senior in high school who was smart and hardworking but struggling in the post-event world, especially since her mother left to join the GR.
The two attend regular parties at another teen's house, which always culminate in a risky variation of spin the bottle that pairs up the partygoers for random sexual encounters.
She attends her last party and leaves early, opting to cut across a railyard instead of taking a ride from a set of twins Aimee is friends with.
He returns home after all the schools shut down in the aftermath, and drinks every night at a bar, sharing news that trickles back of who had been taken.
Tom and Christine disguise themselves as members of a free love movement, the Barefoot People, and travel by foot and bus across country.
Arriving in Boston is a disappointment to Tom, who now has to share Christine with a Holy Wayne couple that has been charged with overseeing the delivery of their Messiah.
[6] The series followed Justin Theroux as Kevin Garvey, a father of two and the chief of police, picking up three years after two percent of the world's population abruptly disappears without explanation.