Shelter of Leaves

On Memorial Day, a series of bomb explosions shuts down major cities across the US. Her apartment in ruins, Sabine flees Washington DC and begins a grueling journey on foot that brings her to West Virginia, where she finds safety at an abandoned farmhouse with other refugees. For Sabine, family is a vague memoryshe cant even remember her last name. Without an identity, she hidesalthough thirty-five, she pretends to be twenty-eight, even to the refugee she falls in love with. But Sabine wants to recover her identity. Despite gangs, bombings, riots, and spreading disease, she longs to return to a family she has begun to recalla mother, a father, and brothers. Are they alive, surviving, in hiding as she is? Do they await news, and hope to reconcile? Even in harrowing times, Sabines desires to belong and to be loved pull her away from shelter.