Growing up is hard enough without the end of the world thrown in.

While reading a memoir, you truly get to walk in somebody else’s shoes for a while, and then return to your own experience. But sometimes you see parts of your own life and childhood reflected on the page and you get reminded that you’re not alone. 

For me, reading Apocalypse Child by Carly Butler was a bit like that. While I didn’t grow up learning survivalist strategies or staying off the grid to prepare for end-times, like Butler I did grow up fully expecting the world to end (eventually, date TBD) reading the Left Behind series (I don’t know why people let their kids read these), and wondering what the point in making a life was if the return of Christ and the tribulation was coming anyway.

Butler’s mom took her beliefs to the extreme. She thought that Y2K meant the end of everything so she fled an ‘unsafe’ America and settled in remote Canadian communities, where they lived in homes without running water or electricity, tended their animals, and prepared for the end. 

Butler writes about the conflict she felt between her beliefs and her desire to be normal and have a full life.

“I had wanted to grow up and old, get married and have babies, write stories, see the world, be remembered somehow. But God and my mom knew better; they always did. I would be a witness to the end of all things and would write down whatever I could.”

Butler beautifully portrays the directions she’s pulled in, and the fear and shame she felt whenever she doubted for a moment. For anyone who grew up in an environment that focused on sin, being “good,” and serving God no matter what, Butler truly captures the conflicting feelings and internal battles that are fought. 

“I believed my selfishness must be a stench to God,” she writes. “Here we were, Christians in danger of being put in prison or worse just for speaking the name of the Lord and His mighty deeds—meanwhile, I dared to want Him to hold back his wrath just so I could experience temporary pleasure?”

Butler’s selfish wants? Children, a golden retriever, and sunflowers waving in her yard. 

After the world carries on after Y2K, and as a teen, Butler starts to pull away and find ways to build a life for herself. She stumbles into barrier after barrier. Her mother brought her into Canada illegally, so she doesn’t have a social insurance number. Her education was neglected. But no matter what life throws at her, Butler draws on her inner strength to build a life for herself and find an identity beyond what she had been taught to believe. 

Butler writes of the people, her found family who stepped up for her and supported her in her darkest or hardest moments, and her book is a testament to the love she has for those people, and that they have for her. 

Apocalypse Child is a stunning memoir and a true story of resilience. 

Carly Butler appears in Setting the Record Straight: Non-Fiction Reading Event at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler on Saturday, Oct. 19. Tickets are on sale Aug. 21, 2024. 

Review is by Alli Vail, Whistler Writers Festival’s marketing manager, and the author of Brooklyn Thomas Isn’t Here.