The Last of the Light

One Wednesday evening, the governments of the world send out a mass text message announcing that the world will end in one month. In the thirty days leading up to the last day of the world, our protagonist, a young man in his late twenties, has watched the love of his life leave, has lost his job and friends and sense of meaning, and has moved back home to spend his final weeks with his survivalist father, Jewish studies/author mother, and Yiddish-speaking grandfather. As everything draws to a close, the young man tries to make sense of faith, family, and how to live a worthy life even though it will be cut short.

Alexander Shalom Joseph is the author of the short story collection American Wasteland, the prose poetry collection Our Mother, The Mountain, and the poetry chapbook Buttons and Bones. He works as a carpenter and lives in a cabin in Colorado.