sentences:  Most of western Europe is dramatically uplifted, transforming the English Channel into a muddy desert, while elsewhere lands are plunged below sealevel and flooded.The protagonist is Matthew Cotter, a Guernsey horticulturalist who finds himself one of only a handful of survivors on the former island.Cotter decides to trek across the empty seabed to England, in the faint hope that his daughter has somehow survived.