Lauren Russell often wondered why her father had been so adamant about teaching her skills that most other fathers wouldn’t even consider teaching their daughters. Ever since she was little, she had been taught how to live and survive outdoors, and how to use firearms to protect herself and those around her. Some of the training had been a bit extreme. Or had it been?
Many of her questions were answered the day the world as she knew it ended. Now, the skills she had been taught serve an essential purpose. They keep her and those she cares about alive.
Even in the sparsely-populated mountains of West Virginia, where she and her family have been forced to relocate for their safety after the collapse, peril lurks around every corner. Normal life has taken on a whole new meaning for Lauren, her family, and the community they have become a part of. In this different world, the new status quo is self-preservation. There is no more middle ground. People either live, or they die.
Lauren’s father didn’t make it home on the day the world changed forever, and she misses him more than anything. Now, in What’s Left of My World, she and her family must learn to endure life’s horrors—without him.
For a brief period after the world changed forever, the self-reliant community of Trout Run Valley managed to avoid conflict. They practiced subsistence, and found safety and security within their numbers. As the post-apocalyptic timeline moved forward, it began to spiral downward. Takers had made their presence known and their malevolent intentions clear, transforming the once benign community into a violent battleground.
In What’s Left of My World, a precarious surprise attack had left the community in a state of repair and reevaluation. Even now as the community rebuilds and continues their livelihood, a new, more sinister enemy is lying in wait—and it poses a threat more dangerous than anything the community has encountered before.
A fight is coming to Trout Run Valley, and every person living there knows it. Previous encounters with their new enemy had foretold the tale. Before the collapse, Lauren Russell had learned many skills necessary to fight and to survive. Her father had made certain that she’d been trained to be a warrior. In THIS WE WILL DEFEND, in order to preserve her way of life, along with the lives of everyone she knows and loves, she will have to become one.
Lauren Russell, her family, and the community of Trout Run Valley had been blessed with a workable blueprint for overcoming nearly insurmountable odds—odds that had been surmounted against them, and others like them, since the blackout, subsequent decline of society, and the world’s devolution.
The aftermath of the most recent onslaught; a ruthless attack by a menacing enemy, had left them reeling in its wake, leaving a once-sustainable food supply damaged beyond repair and two of their own senselessly murdered. Rebuilding would require time—time they no longer had—following the discovery of yet another tribulation in this unending apocalypse.
When various species of wildlife the community had depended on for live-giving food begin to abruptly die off, and several residents become afflicted with an unidentified illness, it soon becomes evident that another adversary, one that former DHS Agent Christian had forewarned of in earnest, had not yet written them off.
A decision is made in desperation. Several inhabitants must leave the safety and security of the valley that had once provided them with so much plenty and venture out into the precarious unknown that lay beyond its borders, in search of medical assistance and to acquire provisions, or otherwise become victims of the atrocious actions enacted by constituents of the former federal government.
Meanwhile, Lauren’s grandmother Faith Gallo had been amassing her own form of defiance inside the FEMA camp she and hundreds of others had been unwillingly confined to. However, her actions had not gone unnoticed. Threats are made and an ultimatum is given, yet Faith stands her ground, refusing to submit. An unwavering response to her oppressors draws a line firmly into the sand, and indicates a promise that a revolution beckons, even in event of her death:
WE WON’T GO QUIETLY
The decision to splinter backfires.
When Lauren and the others leave the safety of the valley in search of supplies and aid, they’re trapped, captured, and tortured. Escape seems impossible…if they’re to survive, it will only be by rescue, and not without blood on their hands and tears in their eyes.
Could you watch one of your own be beaten?
The group’s captors are coldblooded and ruthless, and they senselessly brutalize without pity. Despite Lauren’s bravery in the face of insuperable odds, she finds herself heartbroken. Can she still find the will to keep fighting?
A friend from the past shows his face.
After seeing him, Lauren knows what’s about to happen, and her captors are about to find out, as well. Payback awaits on the horizon.
They stood together. Can they do the same while divided?
Until now, the community had lived and fought valiantly shoulder to shoulder, in peace amongst themselves.
But now, in Divided We Stand, new alliances have developed, confidants from years past have resurfaced, and new leaders emerge. With so many absent, and others now stricken with illness, a dangerous vacuum has materialized. Unless they can pull themselves back together, the valley will be more vulnerable and susceptible to attack than ever before.
Can citizen defenders of a country in ruin learn to stand on their own again? Find out in the fourth book of this post-apocalyptic thriller packed with action & adventure.
Alan Russell thought about his family night and day. They didn’t just mean the world to him, they were his world. As a devoted husband and father, his sole purpose was to love, support, and protect them. Yet Alan had gone a step further, doing everything in his power to ensure his family’s survival in what he believed would become a perilous and uncertain future.
On the day civilization changed forever, he found his efforts hadn’t been enough.
In the first four volumes of the What’s Left of My World series, we follow Lauren Russell’s soul stirring plight as she and her loved ones endure life in a perilous post-apocalyptic landscape. Battles are fought, hard lessons are learned, and not everyone makes it out alive. Some questions are answered, but not an important one:
What happened to Lauren’s father?
Alan Russell had not been seen since the day that had left the world forever distorted. Tragically separated from his family on that terrible day, he was worlds apart from them.
Will he ever make it home?
“I’ve always thought you and I were indivisible, L. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you if I had the means. If some opposing force tried to keep us apart, I’d stop at nothing to find you and get back to you. I mean that.”
-Alan Russell (from Divided We Stand, Book 4 of the What’s Left of My World Series)
Lauren Russell is a daughter fighting tenaciously for everything in which she believes, on an endless search for answers, for herself and the world that was taken from her…
Alan Russell, a husband and father tragically disconnected from everything he’s ever known, is in heartrending pursuit of his family and a life that left him behind.
Alan once told Lauren that he believed they were indivisible, for they possessed a bond between them that was beyond compare.
An apocalyptic event that severed him from his family had proven him wrong. Left with no memory of them, returning to them is only half the battle.
In this blockbuster sixth installment of C.A. Rudolph’s captivating What’s Left of My World series, Alan and Lauren both find themselves miles away from home and even farther from each other.
Can two immovable objects be drawn together by an unstoppable force?
What will it take to finally reunite them?
A world subjugated by tyranny.
A society unraveled.
A nation in shambles.
A population decimated.
A future boundlessly uncertain.
A community of families on the verge of extinction.
The Russell family is finally reunited and the citizens of Trout Run Valley are blessed with a period of repose, but the interlude does not last.
Measures of aggression resume against them yet again, only this time, escalate to an unprecedented degree of ruthlessness, forcing the surviving victims to their breaking points.
Lauren Russell has fearlessly fought for her community, for her family and friends, for herself and for the rights of those foreign to her. Now, she finds herself battling insurmountable odds once again for everything she has left—for what’s left of her world.
How far will Lauren go to put an end to the oppression that has so relentlessly plagued her existence?
Will she right all the wrongs on her own?
Is she prepared to go to war?