Set over the course of one day, a heart-racing story about a woman facing the unimaginable, determined to find safety

Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, she realizes there’s nothing to do but walk.

Making her way across the wreckage of Portland, Annie experiences human desperation and kindness: strangers offering help, a riot at a grocery store, and an unlikely friendship with a young mother. As she walks, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, her disappointing career, and her anxiety about having a baby. She’s determined to change her life if she can just make it home.

As someone who calls Portland home, I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit thinking (okay, worrying) about the Cascadia subduction zone. Ever since that infamous New Yorker article laid out in excruciating detail what a major earthquake could do to the Pacific Northwest, it’s been hard to ignore just how fragile everything around us really is. So when I stumbled on the synopsis for this book, I immediately knew I had to read it. And let me tell you – it delivered exactly the kind of gut-punch, adrenaline-filled, slightly-too-real story I was hoping for. (Though it did nothing to alleviate my anxiety or make me feel more prepared.)

At its heart, this is a story about survival, motherhood, and confronting the life you’ve built when everything literally falls apart around you. We follow Annie, who is nine months pregnant and shopping at IKEA when the Big One hits. From there, she’s plunged into a version of Portland that’s both familiar and utterly foreign. The bridges, the streets, the neighborhoods – they’re places I know, places I drive through frequently – made Annie’s journey hit me even harder. And the fact that Pattee sets the entire story over just one day gives the book this breathless, relentless pacing. Annie’s mission is simple on paper: get home to her husband. But when you’re days away from giving birth, you can’t use your car, your feet are swollen, and the ground has literally reshaped the city beneath you; nothing is simple.

What really sold me on the book, though, was Annie herself. I connected with her almost immediately, and not just because we share a city. Pattee writes her with so much emotional depth. Annie isn’t your typical disaster novel protagonist; she’s anxious, often self-doubting, and fully aware of her own shortcomings. But she’s also determined, gritty, and surprisingly resourceful when it counts. As she navigates the chaos, we’re not just watching her dodge falling debris and desperate crowds; we’re watching her grapple with years of unspoken disappointments: a strained marriage, a career that never quite took off, the loss of her mother and the terrifying unknowns of impending motherhood.

The flashbacks scattered throughout the book were one of my favorite elements. They aren’t just thrown in for context; they make the stakes so much more personal. Seeing where Annie’s coming from – the cracks in her relationship, her doubts about herself – makes every step she takes through the wreckage feel heavier and more meaningful. You’re not just rooting for her to survive; you’re rooting for her to figure out what survival even looks like when life has already felt like it was cracking before the earthquake ever hit.

And then there’s Portland itself. Pattee’s version of post-quake Portland is so vividly rendered, and it honestly gave me chills. I could see Annie staring at bridges twisted beyond recognition, navigating the kindness and cruelty of strangers, trying to figure out how – or if – she could make it across the river to her husband. This isn’t one of those books where the disaster is just background noise; the earthquake is the story, and it never lets you forget it. I found myself constantly asking, What would I do? Could I actually make it home?

If I had one gripe, it’s that I wanted more when all was said and done. This isn’t a long book, and while I get why Pattee chose to focus on just this one harrowing day, I wished we had a bit more breathing room at the end. I wanted to see Annie weeks, months, or even years later – to know what came next. The open ending wasn’t bad, but for me, it felt a little too abrupt. Just a short epilogue might’ve been enough to fully land the emotional payoff.

That said, when I closed the book, my anxiety levels were higher than normal. This is a tense, deeply human, and frighteningly plausible novel that hit a little too close to home. If you’re into survival stories with actual emotional weight – characters you’ll root for, fear for, and maybe even yell at – this is a book I would recommend. I just wish it had been a little bit longer.