Image

The Way

A postapocalyptic road trip and a quest for redemption.

The Way

A postapocalyptic road trip and a quest for redemption

Just out  from Spiegel & Grau

In The Way, Will Collins, the last surviving resident of a Buddhist retreat center in Colorado, is asked to bring a possible cure for a devastating new disease to California. He’s joined on this perilous journey by an intelligent raven, an inquisitive cat, and a savvy teenage girl, and they must all work together to survive.
"Not many writers could match the marvelous imaginative achievement of Cary Groner’s The Way.  Groner creates a post-apocalyptic world that is frighteningly believable, and populates it with finely drawn characters—both gracious and wicked—whose capacity for love, hope, and cruelty mirrors what we encounter in our real, present world.”

— Roland Merullo, Author of Breakfast with Buddha

"Part survival story, part grimoire, The Way is a magical book. Cary Groner is a master storyteller. His glorious, enchanting prose cast a spell on me from the bleak beginnings of his post-apocalyptic tale until its symphonic conclusion."
— Domenica Ruta, author of Last Day
"Cary Groner's The Way is everything that apocalyptic doomer novels should be: entertaining, unsparing, and spiritual. This is an invigorating addition to the vital literature that bears witness to what we can't afford to ignore: our collective patterns of self-destruction. I loved it."
— Claire Vaye Watkins, author of I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness

    Welcome!

    Image

    Cary Groner is an author and teacher based in the San Francisco Bay area. His new novel, The Way, was published in the US by Spiegel & Grau in December 2024, and in the UK by Canongate in March 2025.

    Cary’s debut novel, Exiles, was published by Spiegel & Grau / Random House in 2011, and was called one of the best books of the year by the Chicago Tribune. His short stories have won numerous awards and appeared in in venues that include Glimmer Train, American Fiction, Mississippi Review, Salamander, Sycamore Review, and Southern California Review. For more information about Cary’s fiction see the “Works” page.

    Cary's stage plays have been produced at Carnegie Mellon University and at San Francisco’s Magic Theatre and Eureka Theatre. As a medical and science journalist, he has published more than two hundred articles in a variety of professional journals, consumer magazines, annual reports, and institutional websites.