The Desolation

By Andrew Gillsmith

An undead conscience may be the most terrifying monster of them all.

After a mysterious catastrophe renders the Holy Land uninhabitable, Jerusalem becomes a place people no longer go to live-but to die. In three stories spanning several decades, Gillsmith explores a broken sacramental landscape that mirrors the haunted interior lives of its characters.

Written in the tradition of A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Road, and Dostoevsky's The Idiot, The Desolation does for spiritual horror what Annihilation did for ecological horror. Here, it is not mere biology that is transformed but the soul itself. Contact with mystery is the catalyst, but it is the characters' choices that matter most.

Gillsmith has created a work of serious theology that never evangelizes, treating faith and doubt not as opposites but as two sides of the same coin. It prefers to ask questions and leave the answers to readers, dissolving sentimentality and easy moral arithmetic until all that remains is the naked human ache for meaning and mercy.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GHF5FXB7
• ISBN13: 9798243430739
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 238 Pages
• Weight: 0.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"