num_pages: 303
description: The time is perhaps centuries from now. No one keeps track of years anymore. The place is the USA, tho it no longer has a name. Kincaid, a man dressed in animal skins, is pushing his way through an endless dense forest. He carries a worn piece of paper covered with a net of colored lines, lines that seem to relate in some way to the land and crumbling ruins glimpsed through the undergrowth. The paper is headed "ESSO Road Map: North Central States". Driven by a will he barely understands, he's searching for place marked on the paper far to the west and a face he's seen in a dream. Striking across the wasteland, he discovers what's left of society; the tiny clusters of people huddling together in villages, some deformed by generations of isolation, oppressed by poverty, some beginning to taste a new prosperity, puzzling over objects salvaged from the treacherous ruin's of the forefather's dwellings —machines, books, guns — striving again for a richer life. But across the almost empty land, across widely scattered settlements and lonely rivers, there hangs a persistent echo of war, pain and brutality. Suddenly, quiet places are scenes of terror —bands of horsemen ride north out of the unknown, wielding rifles and whips, raiding, kidnapping and killing, herding people like animals back to their capitol in the south. Kinkaid's caught up in their violence, as he sets out to rescue a girl from the very heart of the slaving culture.
language: English
title: A Secret History of Time to Come
titlecomplete: A Secret History of Time to Come
genres: Post Apocalyptic, Science Fiction, Fiction, Apocalyptic
ratings_count: 64
places: The United States of America
publisher: Alfred A. Knopf (NYC)