Last Day: A Novel

The fates of a cast of seemingly unconnected people converge during the celebration of an ancient holiday in a thought-provoking debut that brings to mind such novels as Station Eleven and The Age of Miracles.

In Domenica Ruta’s profoundly original debut novel, the end of the world comes every year. Or at least it’s supposed to. On May 28, humanity comes together to anticipate the planet’s demise-and to celebrate as if the day were truly their last.

Sarah is a bookish teenager infatuated with Kurt, a tattoo artist, whom she met at her parents’ Last Day celebration a year earlier. Kurt is still haunted with guilt over his role in the death of his young love and wants to make holiday amends to her family. Karen is a misfit with a dysfunctional background who works at the local YMCA, where she keeps getting into trouble-especially when she sets off to find a long-lost adoptive brother. Her friend Rosette has left the Jehovah’s Witnesses to follow a new pastor at the Kingdom of God, where she brings Karen on this fateful Last Day. Meanwhile, in space, a group of international astronauts-an American, a Russian, and a billionaire Japanese space tourist-observe Last Day from afar.

With sparkling wit, dazzling vividness, and wild imagination, Last Day is an exciting introduction of a literary talent-and by the end a haunting meditation on the fate of humanity and our planet.