All Her Loved Ones, Encoded - by Michael Keefe (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

All Her Loved Ones, Encoded is a story of personal struggle set against global climate collapse, as one woman risks everything in order to preserve her family. In 2057, near California's Central Coast, desalination plant worker Kiana Olsen is digging a grave for Javi, her terminally ill husband. Three years earlier, as their daughter Anza succumbed to spectral fever, Kiana and Javi uploaded her mind to Level Up, a virtual worldbuilding program. Now, Kiana is desperate to do the same for Javi. But the government has outlawed consciousness uploads and throttled the internet. When Kiana turns to the black market for the technology she needs, she is arrested and jailed. Her daring escape during a blackout begins her Odyssean journey through the night: a collapsing roof, a confrontation with an armed killer, a Level Up sex party in a condemned mansion, security androids, multiple injuries, and a nocturnal wilderness hike, all with the police on her trail. As Kiana struggles to make her way home to Javi, she finds solace and connection in the virtual histories she has created for her ancestors: a woodland standoff between her great-great-grandfathers in World War Two, her great-grandmother's escape from Cold War East Berlin, her grandparents' meet cute in an ambulance, and her mother's own flight from the law. An intimate narrative that resonates globally, Michael Keefe's All Her Loved Ones, Encoded, is both an urgent warning of our imperiled future and a heartbreaking tale of love beyond the limits of place and time.

Review Quotes

"In All Her Loved Ones, Encoded, Michael Keefe gives us a beautifully interwoven story connecting one woman's quest to save her family with the struggles of the generations that came before her. A prescient, captivating novel." --Ethan Chatagnier, author of Singer Distance

"I could not put it down!" --Dana Spiotta, author of Wayward and Eat the Document

About the Author

Michael Keefe is the author of the novel All Her Loved Ones, Encoded (Running Wild Press, 2024). His short fiction has appeared in Tahoma Literary Review, Thin Air Magazine, Summerset Review, and others. He is the Events Coordinator and Publicist at Annie Bloom's Books, an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, where he lives with his wife, Liz Prato, and their two cats.