Moon of the Turning Leaves, by Waubgeshig Rice. Pub 2023
This book is a sequel to Moon of the Crusted Snow, a book club read in 2020. In the earlier story, an unknown apocalypse event has occurred, cutting off power and communication to a small First Nations community (the “Rez”) in Northern Ontario, forcing the survivors to pack-up and move further north into the bush. This story catches up with the community ~12 years after the blackout, surviving but not thriving on the shore of a small lake. As the wilderness around them is showing signs of depletion from their fishing, gathering, and hunting, they decide to send a small party on a quest south to Georgian Bay and the north shore of Lake Huron, their ancestral home territory. The group of six includes father and daughter Evan and Nangohns, a couple Cal and Amber, an elder JC, and Tyler, the brother of an earlier party member who failed to return.
Spoilers: The group walk south, passing through their old community and a nearby larger city, all abandoned and with signs of considerable unrest and upheaval, as well as decay as nature reclaims the land – roads unrecognizable, buildings collapsed and rotted, cars abandoned. Further south they encounter other survivors – first just signs of them and then groups. Somewhat miraculously, they find a small community not dissimilar to their own – a First Nations clan that has established a settlement by a lake. This community calls itself Saswin, or “the nest”, and while safe and quiet, it maintains a strong vigilance about outsiders and remains as hidden as possible. Further along, they encounter a group of Disciples, scouts from a para-military white supremacist group from much further south. The Disciples are scouting for supplies and alternative locations for its community, as the more southern regions are becoming similarly depleted (there is mention of a creeping radiation sickness in the south, but this thread is not followed in the story). The Disciples are as crazy, violent, and scary as one would expect, and each encounter with them has some tragic consequence for the northerners. The party does eventually make it to Georgian Bay, where they find what they’ve been seeking – a true home, their native land.
This book was excellent – well paced, realistic, complex. The establishment of the alternative communities and societies was much more realistic to me in this story than in the previous, with the intervening decade truly allowing for the construction of rules and hierarchies and for the forgetting of the previous world. Throughout the story, Nangohns perspective is the most interesting, as she has never known a life other than her northern community (she was just 7 when the blackout happened), and so things like shopping malls and gas stations and big screen tvs are unknown to her. Also delightful throughout is the inclusion of Anishinaabe language. Again, Nangohns has grown up speaking both English and Anishinaabemowin, and learning a few words and seeing the emergence of language barriers as the new communities develop was interesting.
This book felt more complete than its predecessor, not least because it closes out the story of the northerners, but also because it’s a bit longer and took more time to explain what was happening and how or why. There is never a full explanation for the blackout – based on the strange and widespread appearance of auroras in the days before, there’s a presumption of a solar flare that caused a complete collapse of the technological house of cards of our world. (I was reminded of a previous read, The World Without Us – what would happen to the modern world if people just disappeared, how would nature take over – and much of what was described there is portrayed here, with the collapse of structures and the associated damage when dams and nuclear power plants crumble.) In such a precarious world, being able to live off the land and endure discomfort are power skills.
Fate: hanging on to it for a bit as part of another book club project.
1 – book with a murder
4 – published in 2023
33 – Canadian author
36 – part of a series
rclr 
J.C. is not an elder. It says he has the soul of an Elder. He’s only middle aged. It says he is 5 years older than Evan. Evan isn’t an Elder. Evan’s parents would be considered Elders.
My own read of it was that JC is an Elder in the sense of being someone looked to for their knowledge and wisdom in traditional and cultural practices. Not an older or elder-person based on age (in the context of the novel’s setting, 12 years post-Blackout, there are few elderly people and not all would have been Elders) but an Elder based on his role and how others treat him with respect and deference.