The Silence (2004)

Jim Kraus's novel was published by Barbour in 2004. In Los Angeles, Tom Lyton writes scripts; by the jacket's account a series of catastrophic natural events then throws the world into a virtual silence, communications and computers fail, and Tom, the commodities trader Megan Smith and the Illinois farmer Peter Wilson are drawn toward the Reverend Jerry Moses, a small-town pastor broadcasting over generator-powered radio. (Open Library)

Watches

Rolex watch: After the earthquake, Tom inventories the survival gear in the Hummer by candlelight and, for the hundredth time, lifts his wrist: the Rolex cost him over five thousand dollars and stopped hours earlier, and with no stem to wind and no way to change its battery it is useless, but he will not throw it away (p. 72). Weeks later, at a militia checkpoint outside a Las Vegas lit again by Hoover Dam, a guard says the casinos will take gold, jewels or a Rolex, and both men glance at Tom's wrist: it is still there (p. 191). Earlier he finds an old friend's Rolex left on the floor of her garage (p. 55). The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: For the hundredth time, Tom lifted his wrist to check his watch. The Rolex had cost him over five thousand dollars and had stopped hours earlier. There was no stem to wind and he couldn't change the battery, yet he wasn't willing to discard it. (Jim Kraus, The Silence, scan cataloged as Barbour Publishing, 2004, p. 72; Internet Archive scan OCR)