Moon of the Crusted Snow

Finished October 22

Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice

This is the first book in The Whitesky Saga, a post-apocalyptic series and is set in a small Anishinaabe community in Canada's north. It is approaching winter and the small community first experiences the loss of their internet service and then the loss of communications with the outside world. They don't know what is going on, what caused these outages, or how widespread the situation is. They learn a bit more when two members of the community who have been away at college manage to return, and by then, the leaders of the community have already begun plans to conserve what they have and to ensure everyone in the community is taken care of.

When new visitors arrive, the community has to decide how much to trust them, and how to include them in their plan. This novel takes place over that winter, and we see the situation as it affects children, elders, and those who didn't learn the skills of survival from the elders. We also see couples come together and couples come apart under the stress. Families take on new roles, and people spend their time in different ways, some adjusting better than others. 

This is an interesting tale, of a group of people that already have a strong sense of community, one that most communities today no longer have. It makes one start wondering how the rest of the world is dealing with similar issues and how one would respond in these circumstances.

The author is Anishinaabe himself and that brings authenticity to the book that affects how I read it. Scary, sad, and yet somehow hopeful. 

On the Beach

Finished August 29
On the Beach by Nevil Shute

I picked this up in the general store waiting for the ferry to Thetis Island and found it a fascinating read. First published in 1957, the novel is set in 1963, a year after the end of a short but terrible war. Over the first few pages, the reader learns of the extent of the war. It would appear that the war started with Albania, turned into an Israeli-Arab war, then a Russo-NATO war, then a Russo-Chinese war, and involved many nuclear weapons including cobalt bombs. Most of the northern hemisphere seems to be affected as no one responds to contacts the surviving American ships try to make. The ships' most senior officer gave the order to sail into Australian waters and place themselves under Australian command.
The main characters are mostly Australian, beginning with Peter Holmes, a Lieutenant Commander with the Royal Australian Navy and his wife of two years Mary. They have an infant daughter, Jennifer.
An American atomic-powered submarine, the U.S.S. Scorpion, survived the war and is now in Melbourne harbour, and in early 1963 Peter is asked to join it as a liaison officer. The captain of the Scorpion is Commander Dwight Towers, also a fairly young man, with a wife and two children back home in the US.
The reader gradually learns of the situation, the fuel shortage, the radioactive dust moving in the atmosphere, the expectations for the future. We see into the lives of Peter and his family, Dwight, and the young Australian woman Moira Davidson that the Holmes invite to help entertain the American when he visits the family on shore leave. We also see the young scientist John Osborne, a radiation specialist assigned to the submarine, and learn of his dreams.
Everyone had a life they were in the middle of living and we see how they adjusted to their new reality, how they changed as time went on, and the truth began to sink in.
In this time of war rhetoric and unstable leaders, it didn't seem like that outlandish a plot.