Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel {Goodreads}
Published by Knoph in 2014.
"One snowy
night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a
production of King Lear. Jeevan
Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A
child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR,
pumping Arthur's chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead. That same
night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a terrible flu begins to spread.
Hospitals are flooded and Jeevan and his brother barricade themselves inside an
apartment, watching out the window as cars clog the highways, gunshots ring
out, and life disintegrates around them. Fifteen
years later, Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony. Together, this
small troupe moves between the settlements of an altered world, performing
Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. Written on their
caravan, and tattooed on Kirsten's arm is a line from Star Trek:
"Because survival is insufficient." But when they arrive in St.
Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for
anyone who dares to leave".