When the manuscript that eventually became THE UNIT landed on my desk, I was a little skeptical. I’m a huge fan of post-apocalyptic fiction but after having recently read The Road and playing Fallout 3 more than was strictly healthy, I wasn’t sure I was ready for the grueling, depressing grind of another story about the end of times. Oh, how wrong I was…

THE UNIT is the post-apocalyptic story I hadn’t realized I was waiting for. Unflinching, honest, brutal, tender, and, above all, humane– Terry DeHart’s debut floored me on the first read. It’s not that it’s not dark. It’s not that horrible things don’t happen to good people. But it does what so many post-apocalyptic stories fail to do, it reminds us of the essential humanity of every player in the story.

One of my colleagues instantly pegged it as, “hey, it’s like The Road if they ever fought back” which, moving beyond the glib, was exactly what I thought was missing from Cormac McCarthy’s excellent, soul-crushing, tale.

Anyhow, you don’t have to take my word for it:

a striking picture of human vulnerability and strength.” — Publisher’s Weekly

Like a crowbar to the skull, the lethal narrative intensity of this novel comes from its brutal realism and all-too plausible story line.” — Explorations

And io9.com picked it as one of their July picks with a description that trumps any copy I’ve ever come up with:

You’ve got a zombie plan, I assume. How’s your fallout preparedness? Vacationing in the Sierra Nevadas, the Sharpe family survives a nuclear strike, but anyone who’s ever read Alas, Babylon! knows that’s the easy part. Now they’ve got to deal with radioactive snowstorms and killer teenagers. Jerry, a badass ex-Marine, just wants to get his family home to Sacramento, while his wife, Susan, does her level best to keep nurturing the kids. Their daughter, Melanie, tries to maintain her pacifist convictions, while her brother, Scotty, goes totally Red Dawn on the people chasing them. Worst family trip ever.” — io9.com

THE UNIT is out in stores now. Read the first chapter here and go download a wallpaper for your computer or mobile device here.