S. Zainab would like to think she bleeds ink but the very idea makes her feel faint. She writes fantasy and horror, and is currently clutching a manuscript while groping in the dark. Find her on Twitter: @szainabwilliams.
If I have to read about a dystopian or apocalyptic future, the experience had better give me hope for humanity because I’ve had my fill of real-life stories shouting out a bleak forecast that have the opposite effect. I might not have been able to bring myself to pick up this book, understanding that it’s all but impossible to write a story set in a time after the downfall of civilization as we know it without putting on full display the ugliness of humankind in survival mode. Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower continues to have me shook–I think about it all the time (even when I’d rather not). But this author’s debut novel was so good I couldn’t resist finding out how the Anishinaabe community central to that story fared after the world went dark.
Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice
This is the follow-up to Moon of the Crusted Snow, a novella I devoured when it published in 2018. I was beyond thrilled when I realized Moon of the Turning Leaves was a full-sized novel. I love a novella but after arriving at the end of Rice’s debut, I was ready to read as much as he could write about the story’s protagonist, Evan Whitesky, and his journey to keep his Anishinaabe community (situated in a remote, wintry region of Northern Ontario) united and lean on passed-down knowledge to help them survive an apocalypse that begins with the electricity being shut off.
As you might imagine, Evan and the community elders have their work cut out for them. Their community has relied on food brought in from outside and traditional practices like hunting have fallen by the wayside. And then there’s the outsider–a white man who preys on the fearful and uses uncertainty to divide people. The mood of the first book smacks of the landscape depicted–cold, threatening, dreadful–and the tension is ratcheted up by a grimly portentous vision that haunts Evan.
Moon of the Turning Leaves is different. While it absolutely confronts the dangers posed by outsiders, racism, and ruthlessness, it also portrays a community that practices selflessness, bravery, and compassion. It offers a vision of the future that, though dire, still contains good people who understand that navigating this new world requires great caution but also community building and holding fast to goodness even when it seems in scant supply, and to sharing even in times of scarcity. This book gave me so much hope last year–I try to hold on to the story when I need a reminder that not all of us are so quick to lean into hatred and selfishness. If you could use an ounce of hope and a beautiful story that might make you shed tears, but in a good way, pick up this book.
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English (US) · 