Have you seen the news lately? Can't really avoid it, unless you live in a very remote area. Spring, where I am, is blooming so nicely, kitty cats sit soaking up the warm on window stills, birds fly overhead, and yet there is war, unemployment, murder and mayhem everywhere. This old world suffers so much. I think however, most of us would not want it all to just end. No more squabbles over ancestral lands, water, rights, etc. While it can be pretty ugly out there, there is a lot of remarkable beauty created by the most populous species on this planet too.

Someone else however, William Joseph in particular, had other ideas. The world ended, and according to his version, no one was supposed to survive, except for a few selected people stashed away. It is a classic scenario in Science Fiction: The end of everything we know, and the start of some new menacing world order, fought by a few leftovers to mess up what was supposed to be the beginnings of Paradise.

The Night Sarah Came Home brings home a new twist on the old plot. For one thing, it is staged in New Jersey, an unlikely place to find the remaining group of people. The story centers on them as seen through the eyes of one Kid Eriksson to whom Sarah is his most blessed beloved he still cannot believe is his. Three friends and their girlfriends on a Jersey Beach when the seemingly impossible happens: a flash of light that nearly blinds one of them, and causes all of them for the rest of the night to find every organic being dead. Rotting lumps of gag stinking mess.

Wisely, none want to go home. The idea of seeing their parents, dogs and cats, and who knows what else in the same mess as a person they saw in a small store where they hoped to find information, is not a good idea.

The Night Sarah Came Home is a very realistically drawn scenario about what might happen if a weapon of mass destruction ever met with a corporation with a marketing paradise idea, out of control. The problem with Paradise is, whose version of it would you want to live in? As for my rating it an 8, it's mostly because the whole thing is depressing to read, but if you like Battlestar Galactica, you will eat up this one.

Reviewed By: Nancy Louise
© June 2009