A global economic collapse has triggered a breakdown in the social order. The grid has failed. There is no Internet, no television or radio. Schools, banks, hospitals, prisons and businesses close down. Government services, police and firefighters, are stripped down to a bare minimum. Property rights have given way to squatter’s rights. There are no jobs and no money. People work for food and gas rations. Millions are homeless. People gather in parks, public buildings and under bridges for shelter. Gardens spring up wherever water and soil are available. Against this backdrop, a father faces the hardest decision of his life. Dear Madge, Denim and Charlie: These are hard times and we are all going to have to make sacrifices. I never would have thought that giving up and moving out could be an act of kindness but here we are. We don’t have enough room and I take more than my share. We don’t have enough food and I need too much just to keep going. The time has come for me to make a hard choice and I’ve finally made it. The best thing I can do for my family and loved ones right now is to go away… I don’t know how long it will take or what I’ll have to do to survive out there but I’ll come back when it’s all over and times are better. When that time comes I hope you’ll understand what I did and why. Your loving husband and father, Stone. Hard Times is the story of an ordinary man and his family in extraordinary times. Stone loses his job, his home and his identity as a father and husband. Swallowing his pride they are forced to move in with his wife’s elderly mother. When other family members join them there is neither enough room nor food. Stone faces a dilemma: Would the family be better off without him? His decision to leave leads him to a life on the road where he learns about himself and his fellow beings. Borrowing conceptually from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Akutagawa’s Rashomon and Aldous Huxley’s Island, Hard Times is about hope and overcoming hardship.
