One Year After

At the start of bestseller Forstchen’s stirring sequel to 2009’s One Second After, 730 days have passed since EMP weapons destroyed nearly all electronic equipment in the continental U.S. After the initial violence and starvation, the community of Black Mountain, N.C., led by history professor and former colonel John Matherson, now faces a different sort of challenge. The federal government, sheltered in Cold War bunkers in Virginia, has instituted a draft. The new federal district administrator in Asheville offers John a position as major in the Army of National Recovery and a reduction in the Black Mountain draft, if John will help suppress a renegade group in the nearby mountains. John and his people must choose whether to side with their neighbors, painted as just plain folks struggling to survive, or the feds, whom John isn’t sure he can trust. Readers should be prepared for some heavy-handed political commentary, but fans of Forstchen’s historical novels coauthored with Newt Gingrich will be satisfied. [em]Agent: Eleanor Wood, Spectrum Literary Agency. (Sept.) [/em]