And they had four guns just in case they were supposed to go hunting, which is a very Wisconsinite thing - we are Wisconsinites. But the reason why those two stories resonated with me so hard is my parents were always like, “You have to have food, just in case.” We had this cabinet full of canned chili and macaroni and cheese and stuff that I did not want to eat in case something terrible happened. It’s one of those neighborhoods where everybody says hi to each other all the time from their stoops like Sesame Street. Again, no crime, nothing to be afraid of. I was honestly like, “Why are we Bonnie and Clyde-ing it in the Village?” And the other one was actually on the end of my block in Brooklyn - a guy who just had all the guns in the world above an extremely trendy ramen shop.

… Everybody there is rich, and there’s nothing to be afraid of. One of them was in Manhattan in the Village on 9th between 5th and 6th. KASHANA CAULEY: Right before I started writing, there were two news stories about New York City people who were stockpiling guns in their neighborhoods. SARAH NEILSON: How did this story come to you? Touching on grief, trauma, desperation, and the complicated nature of love and friendship, the book balances the realities of living in New York City with the absurdity of embracing a fringe lifestyle with pitch-perfect style.Ĭauley spoke with Shondaland about disenfranchisement, real-life Manhattan preppers, grief, love, and the importance of humor in conveying the full spectrum of emotions. As Aretha gets used to life with Aaron, James, and Brittany, she tries to reckon with the increasingly unsettling world of guns, bunkers, and isolation, even as she becomes more enveloped in it.Ĭauley is a former lawyer herself and an experienced TV writer, notably for The Daily Show With Trevor Noah, and her humor chops come across perfectly in this fast-paced novel. When Aretha and Aaron meet on a dating app and fall in love, Aretha eventually moves into the Brooklyn brownstone, which is chock-full of all the necessities needed to survive an apocalypse. Aaron, who also lost his parents, is an entrepreneur who runs a coffee roasting business called Tactical Coffee with his roommates Brittany and James in the brownstone they own in Brooklyn. In New York City, all she’s trying to do is find love, purpose, and enough money to live in the wildly expensive metropolis. The Survivalists follows Aretha, a corporate lawyer with student loan debt carrying the grief from the loss of her parents in a car accident. In her debut novel, Kashana Cauley takes these doomsday preppers to another level, subverting the pop culture narrative in some ways while also meeting it in others. In popular culture, they usually mean someone going overboard to prepare for surviving some form of apocalypse, and often involve stockpiling weapons. Chances are, when you hear the words survivalist and prepper, you have certain ideas about what they mean.

The survivalists kashana cauley