From the author of The Heavens, a dazzling, mindbending novel in
which all people with a Y chromosome mysteriously disappear from the
face of the earth
Deep in the California woods on an evening in late August, Jane Pearson
is camping with her husband Leo and their five-year-old son Benjamin. As
dusk sets in, she drifts softly to sleep in a hammock strung outside the
tent where Leo and Benjamin are preparing for bed. At that moment, every
single person with a Y chromosome vanishes around the world,
disappearing from operating theaters mid-surgery, from behind the wheels
of cars, from arguments and acts of love. Children, adults, even fetuses
are gone in an instant. Leo and Benjamin are gone. No one knows why,
how, or where.
After the Disappearance, Jane forces herself to enter a world she barely
recognizes, one where women must create new ways of living while coping
with devastating grief. As people come together to rebuild depopulated
industries and distribute scarce resources, Jane focuses on reuniting
with an old college girlfriend, Evangelyne Moreau, leader of the
Commensalist Party of America, a rising political force in this new
world. Meanwhile, strange video footage called "The Men" is being
broadcast online showing images of the vanished men marching through
barren, otherworldly landscapes. Is this just a hoax, or could it hold
the key to the Disappearance?
From the author of The Heavens, The Men is a gripping, beautiful,
and disquieting novel of feminist utopias and impossible sacrifices that
interrogates the dream of a perfect society and the conflict between
individual desire and the good of the community.
