Last Last Chance

Book excerpt: A Time Out New York Best Book of the Year Named one of the 5 Best Writers Under 35 by the National Book Foundation Includes an Author Interview and Discussion Questions A lethal strain of virus vanishes from a lab in Washington, D.C., unleashing an epidemic--and the world thinks Lucy Clark's father is to blame. The plague may be the least of Lucy's problems. There's her mother, Isifrid, a peddler of high-end hatwear who's also a crackhead; her twelve-year-old half sister, Hannah, obsessed with disease and Christian fundamentalism; and Lucy's lover, Stanley, who's hell-bent on finding a womb for his dead wife's frozen eggs. Finally, there's Lucy herself, who tries to surmount her drug addiction and keep her family intact in this brilliant novel about survival and recovery, opportunity and apocalypse, and, finally, love and faith in an age of anxiety.