Book excerpt: Once, there was a little girl named Laura who lived in an abandoned cabin deep in the big woods of what was once Wisconsin. Laura was born many years after the Great Bust. Elsewhere, war and hunger and disease still linger. But Laura and her family live safe in their little house in the wilderness, growing their own food, making their own tools, and scavving their own Supplies. Then, one winter, as refugees from the east begin pouring into the nearby market town, Laura and her family are forced to migrate westward towards the dry, unpopulated flatlands known as the Wastes. On their journey, Laura encounters the marvelous ruins left over from Lectric Times and meets the diverse peoples who inhabit the former domains of the Old Merican Emprie. But there are dangers as well on the long road between the Big Woods and the Wastes, for the wild country in which Laura grew up was one still plagued by warlords, cannibals, and a terrible sickness that turns men into monsters...