What if your friends flared out in a red aura of fever? People came to Cape Harrier, at the far end of a two-lane on Florida's swamp coast, to escape the pressures of society. Now society has been decimated, by ecological crisis and an unnamed disease. In a landscape littered with the debris of physical and psychological devastation, the few survivors must pull together and go on. Their environment is benign enough - but are they strong enough? Part prediction, part parable, this is a tale of sparse intensity which affirms the possibility of human survival in the face of the ultimate bleakness. "Lerner breaks the mold. Candid, understated, self-effacing, funny, as stripped down as the emptied world." --Booklist