Station Eleven opens in Toronto at a theater performance of King Lear. The middle-aged actor playing Lear collapses on stage of a heart attack; a paramedic student from the audience leaps up to perform CPR and an eight year old actress watches her idol die on stage. Within a few hours the killer flu that has been making its way across the globe reaches Toronto and within the next few months it kills off nine of every ten people on Earth. Twenty years later the young actress, Kristen, is now part of a Shakespeare Company which travels in horse-drawn carts between the scattered remains of civilization. The following story weaves in and out of flashback of the lives of the characters before the flu and the reality of life after the end of the world.

This book was stunning. My favorite post-world collapse book yet. (And that's saying something, because I really liked the Hunger Games). This book has a sweetness mixed in with the danger, trauma and tragedy that left me astonished.