There was always going to be a last baby boomer; Carlton Jeffries just never imagined that he would be the one.

The year 2087 finds Jeffries stranded with his bluetick coonhound Sam in a dismal, tumbledown shelter on Maine’s Appalachian Trail. Now a remarkable 128 years old, Jeffries remembers it all, from the social turbulence of the 60s to the wars that followed, and on into a future of proliferating biotechnology, political disunion, and natural disasters brought on by climate change. He tells his tale with haunting clarity, reflecting on all he’s done, all he could have done differently, and the bleak and inevitable changes the world should have seen coming.

At once poignant and terrifying, with a mixture of warnings for the future and nostalgic glimpses into the past, The Appalachian spans the course of Jeffries’ long life, charting the unstoppable forces of change, love, and loss as they intertwine throughout the decades.