This book blew me away. I wasn't quite sure how I felt about the story's heroine when she bashed a guy's head in within the first few pages of the book. She is now one of my favorite characters of all time. 15-year-old Temple was born into a world over run by zombies. Her parents probably dies shortly after she was born. She has no memory of them. She spent her youth in an orphanage and various forster homes. She's alone.

Temple is a survivor, moving constantly to stay ahead of the undead, looking for a place where she'll feel safe. She has this ability to meet strangers on the road and make real connections, real friendships with them. This happens in spite of her feeling that she is evil, that she's done things no one should do to another being. Where she sees evil, others see a good person. In spite of everything, she's able to find miracles around her, where others just see desolation. She's hopeful. She's heartbreaking.

And she turns her back on the lost and the dead and the trampled down, she leaves them to their airy graves, and she and the big man next to her look upward at heaven and find there is not just gates and angels but other wonders too, like airplanes that go faster than sound and statues taller than any man and waterfalls taller than any statue and buildings taller than any waterfall and stories taller still that reach up and hook you by the britches on the cusp of the moon, where you can look and see the earth whole, and you can see how silly and precious a little marble it really is after all.