"There is everything left to cure"

This week’s reading challenge - read a dystopian or post-apocalyptic novel – was a challenge. I’ve tried reading other books in the same vein, but I’ve never made it past the first few chapters. Perhaps it was the epigraph by Haruki Murakami that greeted me on the first page, or the fact that the protagonist was safely ensconced in a hospital for the first half of the novel, but I actually finished Find Me by Laura Van Den Berg.

Joy, the protagonist of this novel, is one of a few people who have proved immune to a sickness that has swept across the United States. She, along with other asymptomatic Americans, has been shuttled to the Hospital. Ostensibly, they are there to be studied for a cure. However, the extreme security measures and questionable qualifications of the medical staff make them feel more like inmates rather than patients.

As the story progresses, we discover Joy had less than a stellar childhood. Abandoned as a baby, she grew up in foster care. After leaving the system, she finds work as a night clerk in a convenience store and whiles away the lonely hours sipping from shoplifted bottles of cough syrup. When the sickness starts claiming its victims, a dying relative contacts Joy and gives her the first clue in figuring out her mother’s identity.

It is the search for her mother along with her growing skepticism of the Hospital’s concern for her well-being that drives Joy to escape. On the road, she finds her way from Kansas to Florida. Kismet brings her a traveling companion, a former housemate from her foster home. Together, Joy and Marcus witness the desolation of communities devoid of people and the devastation of neglected infrastructures that predates the epidemic.

Unfortunately Van Den Berg’s chronicle of a sickness without a cure feels all too familiar in light of recent scares. But by focusing on memory and friendship as tools of survival for those lucky enough to survive, she infuses hope in an otherwise bleak existence.