It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season.

Benjamin Resnick’s debut novel, Next Stop, is a work of speculative fiction that explores the precariousness of Jewish American life through the lens of one family.After a black hole consumes the State of Israel, similar strange events occur in cities around the world, ushering in a time of chaos as well as miracles.