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Elsie
The world ended quietly.
Empty streets. Shuttered houses. Silence stretching along the coast.
Elsie is surviving in what remains of her hometown of Lowestoft. Trained to endure and conditioned to stay alive, she moves through abandoned streets by routine alone; breathing, counting, remembering.
When she returns to her childhood home, memories she has spent years trying to bury begin to surface. Family. Loss. Grief. The person she used to be before the world fell apart.
Told through shifting timelines of then and now, Elsie is a quiet, character-driven post-apocalyptic novel about loneliness, survival and learning how to keep going when everything feels broken.
Perfect for readers who enjoy atmospheric storytelling, emotionally driven survival fiction and deeply human characters.
The story behind Elsie
Elsie was always going to be a story about forced responsibility, grief and how this can impact on their lives and be overlooked by those that are mean to help protect and support them.
In a perfect world, Elsie would have passed A-levels with no problems and gone of to her chosen university and would have done well there too. She is clever, sociable and likeable. But she has this tragedy happen in her family, and she is the only one working to try and keep everyone else afloat.
As everyone reading this knows, when you spend your time making sure everyone else's cup is full, yours becomes empty.
When the opportunity to leave her old life behind appears, Elsie takes it. What follows is not the future she expected.
I chose to set it in Lowestoft, because I thought it gave an interesting dynamic, knowing that the places Elsie explores in the book are places I can go to at any point, places that I know well.
The story follow three core themes for Elsie: How will she survive alone in Lowestoft? How will she manage feelings of guilt, grief and trauma? Can she find a reason to keep living?
Alternate Elsie cover.
Designed by Connor Winsdale.
What readers are saying.
​A must read, a hauntingly beautiful take on the post-apocalyptic genre. Dion Wood excels at building a grounded world where the "routine" of survival and the atmospheric, ruined setting feel incredibly vivid. I personally loved the dual timeline that masterfully reveals how Elsie’s past shaped her into a resilient protagonist. It’s a moving, character-driven exploration of grief and memory, a powerful reminder of what it means to truly live. Highly recommended. - Amazon reviewer
A story of someone who's been too strong for too long. The ending left me wanting to hear more. - Amazon reviewer
Brilliant! I loved the fact that I felt connected with the book, I live in the area it’s based. Heartbreaking at times, truly magical. - Amazon reviewer