Description
For listeners of Leave the World Behind and Exit West an astonishingly resonant novel that explores the precariousness of Jewish American life through one family after a black hole consumes the State of Israel and similar strange events occur in major cities around the world ushering in a time of chaos as well as miracles.
When a black hole suddenly consumes Israel and as similar anomalies spread across the globe a conspiracy takes hold: will the holes swallow the Jews or will they swallow the earth?
Against a backdrop of antisemitic paranoia restrictions on Jewish life and spasms of violence Ethan and Ella Jewish citizens of a nameless American city meet and fall in love. Ella a photojournalist documents the changes in daily life particularly among the city’s Jewish residents. Some Jews feeling inexplicably drawn to the unusual events go underground to an abandoned subway system that seems to connect the entire world. Others leave for the south forming militias and stockpiling weapons. But most like Ethan Ella and her young son Michael stay and try to make their way amid the hostility and small joys of the ever-changing landscape.
But then thousands of commercial planes are sucked from the sky. Air travel stops. Borders close. Refugees pour into the capital. Eventually all Jews in the city are forced to relocate to the Pale an area sandwiched between a park and a river. There under the watchful eye of border guards drones and robotic dogs they form a fragile new society.
Suspenseful thought-provoking and brilliantly conceived Next Stop is an enthralling novel that explores the fault lines between our collective national and individual memories and how our deepest bonds can be unexpectedly reshaped in moments of crisis.
