Aloha, dudes!  I’m back from my totally rad vacay in Hawaii.  I met some real pro crushers out there, and the waves were so bodacious that I didn’t wanna come back, but chartroose missed me (I always knew she had a thing for me), so here I am.  In case you’ve never played this before, here are the instuctions:

• I summarize the plot of a book and you guess it.  Leave a comment containing the title and author.  The very first commenter wins, so part of this is timing and luck, too.   I’m pretty sure that winning this contest is kinda like hovering on a heaving lip and then droppin’ into a crackin’ cave and goin’ deep all the way until it fades just right.  What a rush! 

Today’s winner will receive a $25 online gift certificate to The Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, Colorado.  The TC is one of the few large independent bookstores left, and it’s majorly rict, dudes!

Here goes:
(If you haven’t read this, you probably won’t be able to guess it.  Sorry dudes; they can’t all be easy)!  There’s this young dude who is a real dork, but he’s kinda cool too.  He’s a student, and one day when he’s conducting field research, he gets chomped by a rattlesnake.  He makes it back to his cabin and, while he’s lying there fighting for his life, he catches a killer disease, but the snake venom works as an antidote and he lives.  When he heads back to the real world, he finds out there is no real world anymore.  Practically everyone bit it because of the killer disease, and he’s one of the few survivors.  The rest of the novel talks about what happens to him and the other surviving dudes and dudettes as they struggle to rebuild civilization.  Chartroose has read this several times, and is always totally blown away by its dunzo awesomeness!

What is it?  Remember, chartroose wants both title AND author.  Good luck!