The Road is about the travels of a father and son who after surviving a nuclear holocaust that wipes out much of the world are traveling south towards the ocean in order to find other survivors (good guys) that they might hook up with. The book starts several years after the nuclear exchange and the world has been plunged into a nuclear winter of grey rain and snow, little sunlight and decreasing temperatures, and no living vegetation, birds, or other wildlife. It's a story about trying to survive, where the sole purpose is the feeling of the father that he must do anything in his power to ensure his son's survival. At times, this drive is at cross purposes with the father's moral compass, when he teeters on killing others who threaten his main goal. The father is challenged constantly, in search of food to avoid starvation, and to continue the journey while avoiding marauding gangs that have taken to slavey and cannablism to survive. As the story progresses, you realize how intertwined the father and son have become, and it's the young pre-teen son who becomes the reason of morality for the father.
I finished the book before my connecting flight. All I can say is that I had to move away from a crowded waiting area in order to read the last chapter by myself. If you have children, you will feel the same emotions welling up inside you that I did, stemming from the most basic, almost primal feeling of protectiveness that parent's feel. I so much wanted to hug my son and daughter when I finished the book, with tears in my eyes.
