Three years ago, the sun began to die.

In a desperate attempt to reignite the failing star, the United States joined the rest of the planet in unloading its nuclear arsenal at the flickering ember. The missiles burst from silos in Wyoming and Bangladesh, cocooning the earth in tendrils of smoke as they began their two-and-a-half year journey into space. When they finally reach their target, it’s thirty degrees in July and getting colder. Lisa and her husband Guy sit shivering on a South Carolina hilltop, watching as humanity’s best hope at survival shimmers faintly … then disappears below the horizon.
Brock Adams’s Ember is equal parts Emily St. John Mandel and Cormac McCarthy, “a visionary novel of a world gone mad, where the line between good and bad is smeared with gray, and hopeful points of light rage against the darkness” (Michael Farris Smith, author of Desperation Road and Rivers).
Ember is the 2016 winner of the South Carolina First Novel Prize as judged by New York novelist Bridgett M. Davis.

Brock Adams is a senior instructor of English and creative writing at the University of South Carolina Upstate, where he also directs the Writing Center. He has published stories in Sewanee Review, Best American Mystery Stories, Barrelhouse, Acapella Zoo, and elsewhere. His book of stories, Gulf, was published by Pocol Press in 2010. He has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Central Florida.