MOON OF THE CRUSTED SNOW - A novel review

 

I don’t usually read dystopian novels, but this one intrigued me because it was set in a Northern Canadian Anishinaabe community, and I have always been interested in learning about their old way of life, particularly when they are still connected to it in many ways.

The premise of this story is the importance of family and community during a time of crisis. Supporting each other is a way of life for these native people. Nobody goes hungry if someone else has enough food to share. And share they do when all the infrastructure breaks down at the beginning of a particularly hard winter and they have to work together to survive.  As the days go by, they begin to realize that this is not a temporary situation and make plans to survive through the winter. Things begin to heat up when an outsider, Justin Scott turns up -- A white man who personifies Colonialism -- and slowly works to take over the community, thinking himself better and stronger than the others.   

As a writer, I understand the importance of a first sentence, and the author, Waubgeshig Rice hits the proverbial nail on the head with this one:

A crack echoed through the boreal landscape, a momentary chaos in the still afternoon air.

I'm there with him right away.  Such descriptive language. And there’s more where that came from. Rice does an amazing job of setting the scene for the reader. There is also a slow build up of tension as we move through the story and things become harder. People start dying due to lack of food. Bodies pile up and have to wait until the spring before they are buried in the traditional Anishinaabe way. But something even more sinister is going on with Justin Scott that is the most shocking of all.

Though I found this book a bit unsettling at times because what happens to these people could easily happen to us. We are so dependent on an infrastructure for our very survival, it’s frightening to think what we would do without it. The situation between Russian and the Ukraine comes to mind. They have been cut off from much of their infrastructure for two years now. The writing, however, is so beautiful and the slow burn toward the climax is done without a lot of gory details. Instead things happen quietly, and become all the more real because of it. That hits home more than anything. 

I highly recommend this book by indigenous Canadian author, Waubgeshig Rice.