The Road

Cormac McCarthy's 2006 novel follows a father and his young son on foot across an ash-covered America after an unnamed catastrophe has destroyed civilization and nearly all life. Facing a winter they cannot survive in the north, they head south toward the coast with a pistol, a cart of scavenged supplies and the clothes they wear, trying to avoid the lawless bands on the roads. Their love for each other keeps them going. McCarthy traced the idea to a 2003 visit to El Paso with his own young son and wrote the novel in six weeks. It won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was filmed in 2009 by John Hillcoat.

Oprah Winfrey was reported to have made it her book club pick, calling it extraordinary and promising readers they would keep thinking about it long after the final page.