Swan Song (Signed & Numbered Slipcase Limited Edition) by Robert McCammon

First published as a paperback original in 1987, Robert McCammon’s Stoker Award-winning Swan Song remains one of the signature horror novels of its era. Set squarely in the tradition of such post-apocalyptic classics as The Stand, Alas, Babylon and, more recently, The Road, Swan Song invites us to witness the fiery end of civilization – and its bloody, brutal aftermath.

The story begins with a devastating nuclear exchange, the culmination of humanity’s ancient “love affair with fire.” As the world devolves into a toxic wasteland marked by acid rain, dwindling food supplies, and an endless nuclear winter, a large cast of characters struggle to rebuild their lives in a barren, utterly hostile landscape. Among the more memorable of these are Sister Creep, a former bag lady, Josh Hutchins, a wrestler once known as “Black Frankenstein,” Roland Croniger, a young boy who learns to become a savage killer, and the terrifying, possibly demonic “Man with the Scarlet Eye.” Most centrally, Swan Song tells the story of Sue Wanda Prescott, AKA Swan, whose nascent ability to restore the health of the ravaged earth may, in time, lead to the salvation of the human species.

Thirty years after its initial appearance, Swan Song continues to entertain and enthrall. An epic feat of storytelling, it gazes without flinching into the horrors of the nuclear abyss. At the same time, it offers a compelling vision of rebirth and renewal, of hope maintained under impossible circumstances. Readers new to this novel are in for an extraordinary experience. Returning readers will find themselves caught up once again in a moving, beautifully constructed tale. Swan Song is one of those all too rare books that will take over your life for an extended period. Like the best of McCammon’s fiction, it offers the sort of sustained thrills and complex pleasures that only a master novelist can provide.