Title: Moon of the Crusted SnowAuthor: Waubgeshig Rice
Series: Moon of the #1
First Published: October 2, 2018
Publisher: ECW Press
Pages: 224
Genre: Dystopia, Horror, Post-Apocalyptic, Science Fiction
Format: Paperback
Source: Library
Rating:
Synopsis:
With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow.
The community leadership loses its grip on power as the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve. Tensions rise and, as the months pass, so does the death toll due to sickness and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again. Guided through the chaos by an unlikely leader named Evan Whitesky, they endeavor to restore order while grappling with a grave decision.
Blending action and allegory, Moon of the Crusted Snow upends our expectations. Out of catastrophe comes resilience. And as one society collapses, another is reborn.
Buy the Book: AmazonReview
Moon of the Crusted Snow is a haunting character-driven novel about the quiet death of a rural Native community as society outside of the reservation collapses. The setting and tone of the novel evokes an intense feeling of foreboding with the coming winter. The Anishnaabe reservation finds themselves faced with intruders in their community, the same people that once exiled them from their homes as the death toll rises.
The story is a slow burn with sparse and unflinching prose. Even when the people were gripped by the deepest despair, I found the novel hopeful as the tribe finds themselves returning to their old ways of life. I loved this novel start to finish, it stands out as one of the best in the apocalyptic genre.
Quote
“Our world isn’t ending. It already ended. It ended when the Zhaagnaash came into our original home down south on that bay and took it form us. That was our world.”
Content Warnings
View Spoiler »About the Author
About Waubgeshig Rice
Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist originally from Wasauksing First Nation. His first short story collection, Midnight Sweatlodge, was inspired by his experiences growing up in an Anishinaabe community, and won an Independent Publishers Book Award in 2012. His debut novel, Legacy, followed in 2014. A French translation was published in 2017. His latest novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, was released in October 2018 and became a national bestseller.
Waub got his first taste of journalism in 1996 as an exchange student in Germany, writing articles about being an Anishinaabe teen in a foreign country for newspapers back in Canada. He graduated from Ryerson University’s journalism program in 2002. He’s worked in a variety of news media since, reporting for CBC News for the bulk of his career. In 2014, he received the Anishinabek Nation’s Debwewin Citation for excellence in First Nation Storytelling. His most recently role was host of Up North, CBC Radio’s afternoon show for northern Ontario. He left CBC in May 2020 to focus on his literary career.
His proudest roles are as dad to Jiikwis and Ayaabehns and husband to Sarah. The family splits its time between Sudbury and Wasauksing.
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