Review: A Thousand Miles to Nowhere by David Curfiss

Matt Tanner has already seen a lifetime’s worth of death and desiccated corpses, but his horrors are only beginning in the complex apocalyptic ride, A Thousand Miles to Nowhere by David Curfiss.

15 years after a zombie virus burns through the human population, leaving only a few scattered settlements in a gutted world, a new normal has been found, but uncertainty is the only constant left. When a wounded scavenger is brought back to Tanner’s camp deep in the Laguna Mountains, the ragtag survivors there have no idea they’ve opened the door to their own destruction.

With their bastion of safety overrun by a fresh wave of bloodthirsty ragers, Matt is forced to flee. Accompanied by two companions, Steve and Tara, the overwhelmed protagonist must once again fight for survival, and try to unravel a mystery laid at his feet by the infected scavenger. In a world where ideas of family and fate have nearly disappeared, Tanner finds a thread of hope to his own past, and he can’t help but follow to see where it leads.

While the zombies and ragers give the book its post-apocalyptic edge, the emotional struggle of the characters provides much of the drama and tension. Fighting against beloved allies turned into terrible monsters, Matt is the unspoken leader of his dwindling group of survivors, but he must take them back into danger. His desperate quest to locate his mother and brother, sparked by the deadly arrival of the stranger, catapults the protagonist into an existential crisis of memory, family, leadership, and loyalty. Grounding a dystopian thriller in deeply developed characters has proven to be successful for other franchises in recent years, and Curfiss leans into that same narrative strength for this novel.

Even in the midst of this future hellscape, there is room for flirtatious banter and off-the-cuff comments, providing certain scenes with a rustic charm, a hint of what life had been like in the past, before every stranger had become a potential threat. The author’s ability to weave peaceful moments of camaraderie between the brief splurges of violence and tension makes it hard to put the book down, while the patient storytelling further hints at tragedy to come, keeping readers on the edge of their seat. Family sits at the core of this book, and is unpacked from different perspectives – trauma, loss, reunion, resentment – as Matt slowly approaches the truth of his situation.

The pace of the story is consistent and the Curfiss gives ample time for relationships to form and evolve between characters. The slow nature of a cross-country quest is the perfect backdrop for self-reflection and philosophical moments, something often lacking in a traditionally high-octane zombie thriller. The language is declarative and purposeful, with a notable lack of descriptive passages or imagery, but the bluntness works in this context. Like Cormac McCarthy or George Orwell, terse writing can often accentuate the bleakness of existence, creating a powerful mood that underpins the plot and helps to immerse readers fully in this premise.

Although some of the main plot points go beyond the point of believability, David Curfiss has designed a masterful human drama of dystopian angst in A Thousand Miles to Nowhere, making it a gripping and surprisingly thought-provoking read.