Stewart, George R. Earth abides. New York: Ballantine Books, 2006 (originally published in 1949 by Random House). ISBN 0-345-48713-3.

Summary: A graduate student in biology, doing field work on the ecology of a remote region of California, is bitten by a poisonous snake, then falls ill. When he recovers, he finds that during the fortnight he has been in the mountains, almost everyone in the world has been killed by a highly contagious disease. It appears that about one person in ten or twenty thousand has survived, independent of location.

By scavenging, he manages to assemble enough resources to keep himself alive and more or less safe, and even manages a tour across the United States and back, looking in vain for a community of survivors. Eventually, he returns to the suburb of San Franciso where his home is, finds a not unsuitable mate and a few deracinated but sane fellows, and founds a tiny community, capable of producing and rearing children, after a fashion. With a few more additions from outside, the community endures for more than forty years, but gradually loses civilization and eventually becomes a mere tribe.

The narrative point of view follows the graduate student through middle age into senility. Although his life contains some pleasurable moments, he is haunted by the disappearance of his culture and distressed at his failure to transmit any of it to his children and grandchildren. (His most enduring accomplishment is to ensure the survival of the technology of the bow and arrow.)

The book's title reflects both the author's confidence that nature will survive the fall of human civilization with only minor readjustments and his despair at the fragility of human life and human culture.