What's Left of My World

Lauren Russell often wondered why her father had been so adamant about teaching her skills that most other fathers wouldn't even consider teaching their daughters. Ever since she was little, she had been taught how to live and survive outdoors, and how to use firearms to protect herself and those around her. Some of the training had been a bit extreme. Or had it been? Many of her questions were answered the day the world as she knew it ended.

For a brief period after the world changed forever, the self-reliant community of Trout Run Valley managed to avoid conflict. They practiced subsistence, and found safety and security within their numbers. As the post-apocalyptic timeline moved forward, it began to spiral downward. Takers had made their presence known, and their malevolent intentions clear, transforming the once benign community into a violent battleground.

Lauren Russell, her family, and the community of Trout Run Valley had been blessed with a workable blueprint for overcoming nearly insurmountable odds - odds that had been surmounted against them, and others like them, since the blackout, subsequent decline of society, and the world's devolution. The aftermath of the most recent onslaught, a ruthless attack by a menacing enemy, had left them reeling in its wake, leaving a once-sustainable food supply damaged beyond repair and two of their own senselessly murdered.

The decision to splinter backfires. When Lauren and the others leave the safety of the valley in search of supplies and aid, they’re trapped, captured, and tortured. Escape seems impossible…if they’re to survive, it will be only be by rescue, and not without blood on their hands and tears in their eyes. Could you watch one of your own be beaten? The group’s captors are coldblooded and ruthless, and they senselessly brutalize without pity. Despite Lauren’s bravery in the face of insuperable odds, she finds herself heartbroken. Can she still find the will to keep fighting?

Alan Russell thought about his family night and day. They didn’t just mean the world to him, they were his world. As a devoted husband and father, his sole purpose was to love, support, and protect them. Yet Alan had gone a step further, doing everything in his power to ensure his family’s survival in what he believed would become a perilous and uncertain future. On the day civilization changed forever, he found his efforts hadn’t been enough.

Lauren Russell is a daughter fighting tenaciously for everything in which she believes, on an endless search for answers, for herself and the world that was taken from her... Alan Russell, a husband and father tragically disconnected from everything he’s ever known, is in heartrending pursuit of his family and a life that left him behind. Alan once told Lauren that he believed they were indivisible, for, they possessed a bond between them that was beyond compare.

A world subjugated by tyranny. A society unraveled. A nation in shambles. A population decimated. A future boundlessly uncertain. A community of families on the verge of extinction. The Russell family is finally reunited and the citizens of Trout Run Valley are blessed with a period of repose, but the interlude does not last. Measures of aggression resume against them yet again, only this time, escalate to an unprecedented degree of ruthlessness, forcing the surviving victims to their breaking points.