The End Is Now

One week from tomorrow, at precisely 6:11 in the morning, the rapture or apocalypse or Armageddon or whatever else it is you'd prefer to call it, is going to occur. But only in Goodland, Kansas. Stuck in the middle is the Henderson family: Jeff, a struggling salesman who lives with a nagging fear that something will happen to his family; Will, who's just trying to figure out life in the fifth grade; Emily, whose greatest concern is that she won't be nominated homecoming queen; and his Amy, who is growing stir-crazy from being a housewife for eighteen years—and is convinced this was God's plan B for her life. The Hendersons are longtime residents of Goodland, Kansas, a small Midwest town where nothing new or exciting ever happens ... until now. Are the recent happenings and catastrophic weather mere coincidence, or more? The town spirals into chaos and confusion as its residents discover the end is no longer near—the end is now. Rob Stennett's second novel is both a satire and a story of the apocalypse, a thriller and an exploration of family, community, belief, unbelief, and the two thousand-year-old Christian tradition of looking to the sky because the end is near.

Two weeks from tomorrow, at precisely 6:11 in the morning, the rapture or apocalypse or Armageddon or whatever else it is you'd prefer to call it, is going to occur. But only in Goodland, Kansas. The Hendersons are caught in the middle as the town---and the family---divides between belief and unbelief in this satirical and illuminating apocalyptic novel.

Publishers Weekly

Anybody who can make the apocalypse funny without being patronizing deserves attention. Stennett (The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher) brings a dramatist's sensibility (his professional background is theater) to this story of a "test market for the rapture": Goodland, Kan., home not of everyman but the Henderson family, whose members include fifth-grader Will. Lost in a cornfield, Will receives a vision of three signs of the rapture, a time when, according to Christian teaching, true believers will be lifted from the world before it dissolves in chaos and tribulation. That teaching was the basis for the gazillion-selling Left Behind apocalyptic novels. Stennett offers the apocalypse for the wry and non-literal-minded. Parables may be old-fashioned, but satire fits the times. Stennett's imaginative twist is not entirely successful; sometimes the narrative drags as it presents widely varying viewpoints. But the family at the heart of this satire is goofily believable, and examining the nature of belief-whatever its content-is not at all goofy. (July)

Rob Stennett is the author of two novels: The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher and The End Is Now. He's the creative director at New Life Church and an accomplished film and theater director. He lives in Colorado.