The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta

It is a novel focusing on many of the themes that have appeared in the past, the role of religion in American life, and the ways families recover after divorce and other kinds of loss. The Leftovers is about a suburban town where a significant portion of the population suddenly disappears, and the way the survivors cope.

What if!!! right now, with no explanation, a number of us simply vanished? Would some of us collapse? What if the Rapture happened and you got left behind? Or what if it wasn't the Rapture at all, but something murkier, a burst of mysterious, apparently random disappearances that shattered the world in a single moment, dividing history into Before and After, leaving no one unscathed? How would you rebuild your life in the wake of such a devastating event?

That’s what the bewildered citizens of Mapleton, who lost many of their neighbors, friends and lovers in the event known as the Sudden Departure, have to figure out. Because nothing has been the same since it happened, not marriages, not friendships, not even the relationships between parents and children.

"Perrotta has delivered a troubling disquisition on how ordinary people react to extraordinary and inexplicable events, the power of family to hurt and to heal, and the unobtrusive ease with which faith can slide into fanaticism." said Stephen King.