The city is San Francisco. The not long after refers to a devastating worldwide plague that has wiped out most of the planet’s population. The people who survive in San Francisco are mostly artists, hippies, and misfits who pull together a viable community and transform the city. For instance, they paint the Golden Gate Bridge blue.

But when a military general determines to reunite the remnants of the once great United States and sets his sights on San Francisco, the people resist—figuring they have already discovered a better way of life—and stage an artistically creative kind of guerrilla warfare by using such weapons as tranquilizers and water balloons full of jasmine perfume and LSD. In all, it becomes one of the oddest battles ever fought.

Selected by the New York Times as a Notable Book of 1989, The City, Not Long After is a superb human drama told through the eyes of unforgettable characters.