Nowhere Wild by Joe Beernink

Nowhere Wild is the gripping survival story of two young people caught in a deadly post-apocalyptic world. Set in northern Manitoba, Beernink weaves two narratives together into a gritty, heart-stopping climax.

Thirteen-year old Isabelle (Izzy) Chamberlain and her older sister Angie have been living in Thompson when a influenza pandemic strikes. Fifteen-year-old Jake Clarke is alone at a lake in northern Manitoba, unaware of what's been happening to people in the cities and towns. Izzy and Jake tell their stories in alternating narratives. Izzy's story begins in the winter when Jake is struggling to survive with his dying grandfather, Amos. The two narratives catch up when Jake discovers Izzy the next summer on his journey to Laroque to look for his missing father.

When Izzy and her sister Angie are attacked in the house they are ransacking for clothing and wood, Angie yells at Izzy to flee. She escapes, unable to help her sister. Seeing Rick, the older man who has been helping them, Izzy tells him Angie has been attacked. Rick immediately goes to the house but after a series of gunshots returns and tells Izzy that her sister is dead and that they need to return to the bush to be safe. 

They travel through the north part of Thompson, where Rick and his wife Lois and son, Brian once lived. Rick and Izzy's families were very close; her father and Rick were close and Brian was like a big brother to Izzy.  Izzy's parents died four months ago from the flu; first her father, then her mother. Izzy and Angie were taken in by Lois who was now divorced from Rick. But then she died and Rick returned to his ex-wife's home. In July, Izzy and Angie left Thompson with Rick. Food became scarce, so along with many others they had headed south to Winnipeg. Meeting survivors from Winnipeg heading north they learned of gangs who stole and killed. When their group was attacked by these gangs, Rick took them into the bush where they remained for the rest of the summer. In September when the weather cooled and they ran out of food, Izzy, Angie and Rick returned to Thompson.

With Angie dead, they now head into the bush. Rick grabs the cross-country skis, snowshoes and the deer carcass and they head out of town into the woods.Impatient, Rick blazes through the bush not caring whether Izzy can keep up. Sleeping in a thin tent, cold and hungry, Izzy and Rick make their way to a large lake which is now frozen over. In a blinding blizzard, Izzy almost becomes lost but the two eventually arrive at a dilapidated cabin that was once frequented by Rick's grandfather. While Izzy spends several days cleaning the cabin and gathering firewood, Rick sets traps and hunts for food. He begins talking about staying at the cabin permanently, referring to Izzy as Isabelle and then begins to make Isabelle a bed. However, to Izzy's horror the bed he makes is for both of them. Reluctantly Izzy agrees to share the bed not really realizing what is about to happen. Then one night as a storm rages, Rick rapes Izzy. As the rapes continue nightly, Izzy finds herself trapped in a cabin, in the middle of the bush, entirely dependent upon Rick for her survival. Devastated she realizes that when she and Angie were in the bush the previous year, Rick was raping her sister. She comes to the realization that she will have to escape, otherwise she will be trapped for good.

To that end, knowing she will never be able to fire one of Rick's guns, Izzy makes herself a slingshot and becomes adept at using it. She is so good that one day she is able to kill a hare for dinner. However, when Rick returns to find her cooking the delicious hare and he has only a small ptarmigan, he becomes enraged. He beats Izzy, throws her dinner into the fire and burns the slingshot. This only makes Izzy more determined to leave. Izzy finally decides she can no longer go on when Rick murders a man who suddenly appears at their cabin and who understanding what is happening to Izzy, attempts to take her to safety.

Meanwhile, during the summer before winter sets in, Jake Clarke sets out to learn what has happened to his father, Leland Clarke. Jake, his mother and his father, along with his eighty-year-old grandfather, Amos, had been flown in the previous June to spend a week at a cabin on a northern Manitoba lake. Their pilot, Jim Bridger, never showed up and the radio had been silent for days. Unusual for the start of the summer season. By late August they realized that no one was coming to get them. When Jake's mother cut herself while filleting a fish, her hand soon became infected and she developed sepsis. Jake's father decided to go for help - a journey of one hundred and fifty kilometers to Laroque. Leland told Jake he would return in three weeks but he never did. His mother died three days after his dad left. Amos, who is Cree, tells Jake that years of hard living after the death of his wife, Beth, have left him with little time left - maybe until spring. Eleven months later, having survived the winter, Jake is burying his grandfather and heading south to find his father.

Using maps and following the route planned out by Amos, Jake begins his journey remembering the advice of his grandfather not to travel too quickly. He explained to Jake that he will need to portage over land once the rivers turn north, to get to Sand Lakes Provincial Park and into the Churchill watershed. Fighting hordes of mosquitoes, the exhaustion of portaging, and a lack of food, Jake works his way slowly south. Along the way through ridges and small lakes, Jake remembers his father's survival checklist: shelter, fire, water, food and his grandfather's tips on traveling in the unforgiving northern wilderness.

Jake's travels on the river do not last very long however when disaster strikes. He runs into a log jam causing his canoe to sink. Without a canoe, Jake must now travel through the bush on foot which is not only more difficult but takes longer. One day in early summer, Jake hears gunshots which lead him to Izzy's cabin. Hidden in the bush,he witnesses Izzy attempting to escape using what Jake recognizes as Bill Six Rivers canoe. To his horror he witnesses Rick's vicious assault on Izzy. Unable to process what he's seen and unwilling to accept the possibility that he might have to kill a man, Jake decides to move on quickly. However, unable to get the memory of Izzy's beating out of his mind, Jake knows he has to return and help the girl whom he believes will not live much longer. When he reaches the cabin, Jake watches as Izzy tries to drown herself in the lake. Grabbing the canoe he quickly enters the lake, pulling a drowning Izzy to safety. Rick is not content to lose Izzy and despite shooting at Jake, the two manage to make it to safety. But they know Rick will not give up Izzy so easily. Can they make it back to Laroque before Rick tracks and finds them?

Discussion

Nowhere Wild is an exciting story about the struggle of two teens to survive in the harsh post-pandemic Canadian wilderness. Jake Clarke must survive a 260 kilometer journey through the bush relying on his wilderness skills to find food and shelter. Jake's narrative is filled with detailed descriptions of bush skills, encounters with wildlife and travel. His ability to overcome the difficulties he encounters will determine whether or not he survives the journey back to Laroque. Jake draws on his Cree heritage and his experience working with his father's venturing business to help him survive. Until he meets Izzy, Jack has no idea what has happened to people outside the bush.

The situation with Izzy forces Jake to confront the possibility of having to kill a man in order to save someone's life. Jake has to make a choice between being home in Laroque in ten days time or going back and rescuing a girl he doesn't know. What he does know is that "His father had asked him, all those months ago, to do him proud --to do what needed to be done." and the fact that the girl knew what was going to happen to her if she was caught by the man, trying to escape. Despite this, Jake struggles with the possibility of having to kill a man. "Deer and bears were animals -- food. To be respected, no doubt -- but food just the same. Deer blood was no more disgusting to him than oil to a mechanic. But human blood - that blood would stain. It would leave a deep, dark patch on his soul."

Two weeks after their escape, Jake realizes that Rick has not given Izzy up. Not knowing all the details of Izzy's relationship with Rick, he questions her as this will influence whether or not he needs to use his gun. Later as they are being pursued by Rick, Izzy asks Jake for the gun. Jake tells her "Even if you could handle this gun, shooting a man is not like shooting a deer, Iz." Jack wants to be the one to fire his father's gun but he still holds out hope that it won't come to that.

Izzy Chamberlain must survive the brutal abuse at the hands of Rick until the summer and she can make her escape. Izzy is a resourceful young girl but unlike Jake, because of what she has experienced she appears to have no qualms about the possibility of killing Rick. She realizes that he will never let her go.

Beernink builds his story to a heart-pounding conclusion. Not including a narrative by Rick places the reader in the same situation as Jake and Izzy; they have no idea where he is or if he's even following them and what he's thinking. Yet the confrontation with Rick is not unexpected and in that regard he's a very predictable antagonist. A map showing the location of Izzy and Rick's cabin and the route travelled by Jack south towards Laroque and Thompson would have helped place the setting of the novel. Details are never really given about the flu pandemic except that almost everyone who contracts the illness, dies, leaving a world that collapses economically and socially. 

This novel cannot be recommended for teens because of the sexual violence and gun violence it contains. This survival story could have been written without the overt violence and been just as impactful. Joe Beernink, who is a software developer living with his family in Seattle, grew up in southwestern Ontario. Nowhere Wild is his debut novel.

Book Details:

Nowhere Wild by Joe Beernink
Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd       2015
296 pp.

Fight For Power by Eric Walters

Fight For Pow3r is the exciting second novel in Walters' Power of Three series. It's now been sixty-six days since the catastrophic crash of computers bringing modern life to a halt. Nothing electronic works forcing society into an agrarian existence. Since then Adam and his family along with Herb, a former CIA agent and others have organized their neighbourhood into a community working together to survive the catastrophe.

Set in a location geographically similar to a neighbourhood in Mississauga Ontario, the story opens with Adam and the rest of the Eden Mills community dealing with the aftermath of blowing up a bridge to save their community from an attack by another band of survivors. After a nearby neighbourhood, Olde Burnham was destroyed by a group of heavily armed survivors to the north, Adam's group determined that they were planning a major attack on their neighbourhood. This group appeared to be made up of ex-military men.  Herb orders Brett and his team to search the bodies and vehicles for anything that can be used including weapons and body armour.

Back in their neighbourhood, the committee made up of Adam's mother, Herb, Judge Roberts, Councilor Stevens, the fire chief, two engineers, a lawyer, Howie who was one of Adam's mother's police officers, Lori's father, Mr. Peterson and two others, debate how to follow up the attack. Herb tells the Eden Mills group that unless they attack first their fate will be the same as the Olde Burnham neighbourhood. They go on the offensive, bombing the bridge leading to their side of the river, killing four hundred and eighty three men from the military compound. After scavenging for supplies and weapons from the bodies, Herb is determined to destroy the remainder of the group. He believes that unless every single person in the marauding group is killed they will continue to attack them.

First he orders Brett to take a group of trusted men to the far side of the bridge to make sure that any scouting party sent out from the military compound does not return alive. Then Herb convinces the committee to sanction the attack on the compound using two hundred and forty men and women from the neighbourhood.

Prior to the attack, Adam learns that they have a prisoner, named Quinn, who was left after the assault on Olde Burnham. Herb takes Adam to talk to Quinn who has been uncooperative. When Herb leaves a short time later to get coffee, a woman bursts into the room threatening to kill Quinn. Adam manages to defuse the situation until Herb returns with the guard. However, Adam is shocked when Herb tells him the entire situation was staged in order to get Quinn to cooperate and provide them with information about the compound. Herb tells Adam that while he is important to make sure they survive, it is Adam's strong conscience that will be key to helping rebuild society when things improve.

When they do attack the compound they find it abandoned but they discover forty-seven women and children who have been kept as prisoners in a building. At first Herb does not want to take these people to Eden Mills, but Adam insists they take them back with them. They also find an old Cessna and manage to push it back to the neighbourhood where repairing the engine becomes a priority.

Throughout all of this Adam becomes increasingly alarmed at Brett's strange pleasure in killing and his blood lust for battle. Brett tells Adam that he loves the high, the rush adrenaline produces and that he just wants more and more. Brett admits to Adam that he admired the men from the compound even though they locked the women and children up to starve to death because they were prepared to do whatever they needed to in order to survive. Brett's attitude horrifies Adam, who is becoming increasingly wary of his strange behaviour.

When they are in the forest hunting deer, Adam inadvertently brings down one deer. A second deer is killed. However two young kids also out hunting insist that the second deer killed is theirs. Brett violently threatens the boy and girl leaving Adam to intervene. Adam tells Leonard and Penelope that they will share the deer meat with them and despite Brett's insistence that they do not, this is what the committee and Herb agree to do. When Adam, Todd and Lori help Leonard take his share of the meet home, they meet his family, his grandfather Sheldon, his Aunt Mary and his mother Amy who are living in tents, off the land in the forest.

Herb decides to send Brett and his small patrol out at night to learn what is happening outside the walls. Howie has indicated that things outside the neighbourhood walls are growing increasingly tense during the day. As a result Herb feels it would be wise to know what is happening at night too. Brett chooses nine people to be on his patrol including Tim and Owen, two boys Adam knew well from high school. They dress in black and slip over the fence each night to conduct their patrols.

Two unexpected events send the neighbourhood into a crisis that leads to a dramatic showdown. First, a condominium bordering the western side of the neighbourhood is set afire, leaving many homeless. Although Herb does not want to help these people, Adam once again insists that the least they can do is to find sleeping bags and tents for them. The homeless are allowed to set up tents outside the wall of the neighbourhood but Herb and the committee are insistent that they receive no other help.

And then one night, the tent community is attacked by men in black who set fire to the tents and kill many of the condo fire survivors. At dawn Herb, Adam and others go out to assess the damage. The identity of the attackers is unknown and the motive for the attack puzzling since nothing was taken. No longer safe outside the walls of the neighbourhood, Herb comes up with a unique solution to help the survivors. Soon however, Adam learns the truth of the attack and that the greatest danger they are all facing is from within their own community.

Discussion

The Fight For Power is an thrilling second novel with a cliffhanger ending that will leave readers desperate to read the final novel. Narrated by Adam, the story flows easily, his voice believable and remarkably mature for a young person whose world has been completely turned upside down. Yet for all his maturity, Adam is still a typical teen, questioning the actions of the adults in his life. His questioning nature is characterized by strong morals and an active conscience. He wants to help everyone and he wants to give most people the "benefit of the doubt" while struggling to sort out the morality of their actions and decisions. Although he admires Herb, he's not entirely sure he trusts him and recognizes that Herb is only feeding him the information he needs him to know.

In direct contrast to Adam, are the two most interesting characters in the novel, Herb and Brett. Herb is a former CIA agent and has admitted to doing many terrible things. He has a way of referring to people in a derogatory manner. When he and Adam are discussing what to do with possible survivors of the bridge attack, Herb tells Adam they may have to "take action" which upsets Adam. Herb tells Adam, "...It's on me. I wouldn't leave a dog to die in pain." to which Adam responds, "But we're not talking about dogs..." When Adam is arguing with Herb about taking in the women and children they have found at the compound, Herb compares the survivors to garbage when he states "It's not that simple. You can walk by a piece of garbage on the ground, but once you pick it up you have the responsibility." Again Adam reminds Herb that people are not garbage.

Brett who was a rookie police officer under Adam's mother's command, turns more violent as the novel progresses. He is impulsive and overreacts in almost every situation involving conflict. At first he is friendly towards Adam, but gradually that friendliness turns to contempt. His true personality is gradually revealed through his actions. He begins making derogatory remarks about Adam's mother and his girlfriend, Lori. The bloodlust Brett experiences when out hunting for deer frightens Adam who doesn't realize that it is this same excitement of the hunt that will draw Brett into hunting humans outside the walls at night. It is a deadly miscalculation on Adam's part. One night when Brett arrives back at Eden Mills with two of his team dead, he is questioned by Herb and Adam's mother. His attitude is cocky and confrontational. When Herb and the committee learn what Brett has been involved in outside the walls of Eden Mills, Herb recognizes the danger Brett has become and knows he must act.

Herb is able to recognize what Brett really is because he sees himself in Brett. Brett represents Herb when he was younger, a man addicted to the adrenaline rush and who learns to be a weapon. Brett describes his actions as "...I wasn't thinking, I was feeling. Like I said, it's a rush." Herb tells Adam that in the end "he and I are both animals, but I believe that we are basically two different types of animals." Herb states that he used Brett as a weapon just as the agency used him but that he likes to believe that he was motivated "by a sense of duty." Where they differ is that Brett enjoys the killing and feels no remorse for what he has done. So despite being similar in their natures, the strongest conflict in the novel exists between these two characters. This results in the ultimate showdown that creates the climax of this novel.

The Rule of 3 series will definitely appeal to 12 to 14 year old boys who are looking for an exciting survival story. Walters tackles the ethical problems and difficult decisions that survivors of an apocalypse might encounter but is never heavy-handed in his treatment. Walters is a Canadian author who has been quietly toiling away at his craft since 1994, having penned over ninety books since that time. Many of those books are solid reads that circulate well from libraries and which find themselves on class booklists. Walters has stated that one of the main themes in his novels is the ability to effect change in one's life and to survive difficult situations. This view is based on his own personal experiences growing up when he lost his mother to cancer at age four and watched his father struggle to raise him and his older sister while coping with mental and physical health issues, and unemployment.

Overall Fight For Power is a great second book to a very exciting series. I wanted to keep reading and reading, the ending coming all too soon. Well written, with a creative cover to draw readers in. Highly recommended!

Book Details:

Fight For Power by Eric Walters
New York: Farrar Straus Giroux      2015
346 pp.

Ashes, Ashes by Jo Treggiari

Author Jo Treggiari offers teen readers a dystopian adventure/romance in Ashes, Ashes, that in my opinion, had great potential but ultimately fails to meet the mark.

Sixteen year old Lucy "Lucky" Holloway is surviving in post-apocalyptic New York City. The world started to fall apart when she was eleven years old. At that time, the first floods came, along with severe storms, hurricanes, tornadoes and then earthquakes. The storms melted the polar ice caps altering the shape of the continents. Many low-lying cities were obliterated. New York City became six or seven scattered islands connected to the mainland by bridges.

Four years after the severe weather began, a smallpox plague began to ravage society. The first wave of the plague killed many people but then it mutated and a second more devastating wave occurred in which most of the remaining population was killed. Only 1 out of a million people survived the second wave.

As the plague intensified, Lucy continued attending school never quite noticing that there were more and more empty desks. She was an outsider in high school, often going unnoticed by her peers. Posters of lists of symptoms appeared all over school. Lucy was repeatedly called to the health office for blood tests. The last time she was called for yet another blood sample, she'd discovered a thick dossier on her. When she was asked about why she had never been vaccinated, Lucy told them it was due to her older brother Alex's fatal reaction to a vaccination.

Lucy lost her superjock younger brother Rob, her brainiac older sister, Susan "Maggie" and both her parents. Eventually, Lucy left her family's home for the shelters in the city. Many of the highrises in New York city were massive concrete cairns containing the bodies of thousands of plague victims. Friendly bombing had turned areas of New York city into rubble. When the shelter she was living at was raided by "Sweepers", government workers searching for plague survivors, Lucy decided to strike out on her own.

She fled into the wilderness of Central Park, taking with her her mother's shawl, her father's hunting knife, a box of freeze-dried food, a bottle of spring water and her tenth-grade yearbook. She made herself a camp in the wilderness and this is where we find her when Ashes, Ashes opens.

However, the course of Lucy's life is changed once again when she goes out on a walk and is hunted by a pack of wild dogs. She is aided in escaping the dogs by a handsome young man named Aidan. He tells her that he's been watching her and that she is being hunted by the Sweepers who send out the dogs to find survivors. The Sweepers are the people who live in the Compound on Roosevelt Island where the smallpox hospital is located. Aidan encourages her to come live with his band of survivors. Although Lucy declines his invitation, when her home is destroyed days later, she decides she has had enough of living on her own and treks to the survivor's camp on Ward's Island.

But Aidan's camp isn't safe either and Lucy learns that there are frequent raids by the Sweepers who kidnap people and infect them with the plague. Lucy, Aidan and their fellow survivors decide to rescue a recent group of kidnapped children only to discover that the situation was a cleverly laid trap to catch Lucy, the sole unvaccinated survivor of the plague.

There's no doubt that Treggiari develops the setting of her story well with vivid descriptions of the destruction wreaked by the climate disasters and the rapid annihilation of the population by plague. Because Lucy spends the first part of the story alone, the first 100 pages or so lack dialogue for the most part. However, the author does manage to portray Lucy's resilience and strength of character in describing how she has survived for over a year by herself. Treggiari also utilizes detailed description and two major events to capture the reader's attention.

The middle section of the book deals primarily with Lucy's struggle to fit into Aidan's camp and details her growing attraction to Aidan. There is a strong development of conflict between Lucy and another survivor, Del who is also attracted to Aidan. I felt the author did a good job of portraying the difficulties survivors would have living in the post-apocalyptic wilderness as well as their fears and hopes.

The ending however, was less satisfying. Although suspenseful, the result was predictable and anti-climatic.

For those who might be puzzling over the book's title, Ashes, Ashes is a reference to a version of Ring Around the Rosy whose origins are traced back to the Great Bubonic Plague of London in 17th century England.

Ring around the rosy
A pocketful of posies
"Ashes, Ashes"
We all fall down!

The rosy red rash was a symptom of the plague, usually a rash with a ring around it. Posies were carried in pockets to ward off the smell of disease which was thought to be the way illness was transmitted. The ashes, ashes refers to the cremation of dead bodies, the blackening of the skin and so forth. Plague survivors in Ashes,Ashes are described as being hideously deformed, with blackened skin and red eyes.




Book Details:
Ashes, Ashes by Jo Treggiari
New York: Scholastic Press 2011
344pp.