Summary

The novel begins with the limited third-person narrator, Mark Spitz, recalling his lifelong desire to live in New York City. As a child he and his parents visited his Uncle Lloyd in Manhattan, and he was enamored with the city’s beauty and modernity. Uncle Lloyd was wealthy; Mark Spitz’s family was not. During Mark Spitz’s family visits to New York, he keenly observed the mechanics of New York, calling the city a “magnificent contraption” in which human beings worked in harmony with (4). Sometimes Mark Spitz envisioned that he had New York City all to himself, hoping he could experience an “uninhabited city, where no one lived” (6).

Subtly, Mark Spitz reveals that New York City was in ruins. His family had died, and he was now part of a survival team called Omega Unit that swept through Manhattan’s high-rise buildings...