When the world collapses, most post-apocalyptic stories rush toward exotic wastelands or futuristic compounds. However, in Sins of Survival: the From Darkness series, Roxanne Ward does something far more brilliant: she chooses a place you know—Colorado.
The seven-day meteorite storm ends, yet the sky stays black. Ash chokes the sun. Governments are gone. Laws are gone. In their place: corporations and decrees.
Roxanne Ward drops her characters into a state you’ve driven through, vacationed in, and lived in. Many cities have been reduced to grey, dusty shells, and their skyscrapers to hollowed-out husks. But the grand city of Denver was spared. It becomes the central hub of a crumbling nation until one by one, the other states go dark.
The Journey Begins in Blood and Ash
Sins of Survival, Book One of From Darkness series, opens with sisters Jillian and Arial existing in a dreary world. Like all subjects at the bottom of the caste system, they are in a constant fight for survival. But they are in more danger than they know. Their father’s past is coming back to haunt them.
He was a brilliant chemist whose formula was projected to save millions, but it could just as easily destroy nations. Until recently, the formula and the women have been hidden and protected by a secret rebel faction called the Robinhooders. Now they are hunted by the Corporate Neighwah Army and the Dranger mercenaries.
The women’s destination: a sanctuary city, whispered to exist in the highlands of the Colorado wilderness, but it comes with a risk. It could be a slave camp or worse, a pleasure house, but with no more than a note from their father and the advice of a teacher, they gamble everything on its mysterious promise.
A Tunnel Is a Symbol — Not a Shortcut
In this broken world, the Eisenhower Tunnel becomes the idea that sanctuary can still be engineered out of the wreckage. The neglected Eisenhower Tunnel, the critical passage under the Continental Divide, is on the brink of collapse. Yet, to Bannon Vogel, its new owner, it holds the promise of freedom. In Sins of Survival, this is the perfect metaphor for a civilization suspended between extinction and rebirth. Logic drives the details of this story, and Colorado is chosen for its potential, not beauty.
A Sanctuary That Still Feels Human
The power of Ward’s choice is this: she grounds hope in a realistic solution. Colorado is reachable. The Eisenhower Tunnel is tangible. This isn’t a fantasy dome or a sci-fi spaceship; it’s a landmark many readers have literally driven through without ever thinking about what it could mean.
In this story, it becomes the final line in the sand, the fragile membrane between civilization and oblivion. The sanctuary, designed to revive the human spirit of self-determination, is a reminder of how precious and tenuous freedom is. Faith in this concept is the beating heart, pumping hope through a community, forever surrounded by the threat of complete ruin.
Ward’s brilliance shows up right here. She refuses to build a utopia walled off from fear. Instead, she gives us a passage cut straight through the mountain, a threshold that demands choice. In this world, Colorado is the gateway—the place where humanity must decide what comes next.
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