The story begins with events just before the Great Renunciation and ends three years later with the family fleeing the chaos and social breakdown around their home in Brooklyn to live in upstate New York.

The second part takes place in 2047, and follows the now middle-aged great-grandchildren (and the patriarch's daughter, now in her 90s) as they strike out, once again, to find refuge from an increasingly authoritarian United States government in the separatist enclave of Nevada.

It’s a bubbling, spitting pot of its author’s agendas, but laced with Shriver’s spicy intellect, her unapologetic eye for detail, her suitcase of deviant ideas, it is also a salient, spellbinding read.

"[1] The Guardian and the Financial Times also reviewed the work, the latter opining that "Shriver’s intelligence, mordant humour and vicious leaps of imagination all combine to make this a novel that is as unsettling as it is entertaining".

[6] Kirkus Reviews said that "[p]olitically, this may be the only novel Mother Jones and Breitbart can both take an interest in, though it might tire them both" and called it "[a]n imperfect but savvy commingling of apocalyptic and polemic.