Drowned world It has been eight years since the waters of the great flood rose in a global cataclysm, swamping cities, erasing countries and drowning the damned. Drowning, in fact, everyone but Pa and his three children, Alice, Finn and Daisy. Pa had listened to the voice of God before the rain started falling and built an ark in his Los Angeles backyard. Pa's wife came with them, too, but she died saving then-infant Daisy from the flood, and it was a widowed and grieving Pa who brought his young family to the island that now supports them, where they farm and hunt, read the Bible, and wonder if they really are the last people on earth. They are not. They never are in stories like these, and the opening lines of Sam Taylor's fierce but uneven novel tell us that there's more to Pa and the island than meets the eye. "Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?" he asks. "I don't know who you are but you're headed into trouble." For Pa has seen a "dark mark" on the horizon, floating ever closer to his Paradise and filling his heart with "fury and fear", because it inevitably brings with it "the filthy stench and lies of Babylon". He must, at all costs, keep his children from contamination. Pa has secrets, starting with a determination to keep his children away from the "Afterwoods" that crown the island, and especially the "Knowing Tree", a huge redwood with ladders up its