The Road by Cormac McCarthy

My favorite book of all time is "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. The book is so compelling to me because it tells the story of what lengths a parent will go to in order to protect and sacrifice for their child, even when it seems pointless to continue trying.

The setting for the story is the near future in a bleak post-apocalyptic version of America after an unexplained nuclear catastrophe. There are some incredibly desperate and horrifying depictions in the story involving the desperate lengths people will go to in order to selfishly survive, even grotesquely resorting to cannibalism. The vast majority of survivors in the story are ruthless in their attempt to rob and take what little is left in order to stay alive.

But the parts of the story that broke my heart open were the cruel glimmers of hope, like the hidden cache of food the father and son discover which offers them the briefest respite from the horror of their now familiar desperate lives.

In the end, hope is indeed the only thing that survives, and, against all odds, the father /son pair discover there are others like them still alive, who want to help each other survive this together instead of just taking and killing for themselves.

We find out that the father has been literally dying along the long road of their journey to some kind of salvation, and he ultimately has to entrust his surviving child to the hands of strangers. And in that way, the story ends, and life goes on, somehow.

-When curling up with a book like this, consider a comfortable and casual pair of gel reading glasses that are lightweight and easy to wear. You want a pair that will not interfere with the emotions a story like this can evoke.