Moon of the Crusted Snow: A Novel
By: Waubgeshig Rice / Narrated By: Billy Merasty
Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
A quiet tale that builds and Builds and BUILDS until I danged near screamed with the tension!
Soooooo, I knew absolutely zip nada nuthin’ when I saw Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice. All I knew was that I do Native American Heritage Month, and it’d be an awesome addition. That and…. well, Kobo had it on Sale, so dude I was so hooked! And little did I know at the time that a global pandemic would be in the future and that this not-quite 7 hours of story would start looking less “Apocalypse” and more “Prescient”… Dude (again), who kneeeeew?!?
The story opens with Evan Whitesky finishing off a hunt by taking down a massive bull moose. It’s winter, and it’s time to stock up on meat to feed his wife and two kids, to share with parents and friends, to offer if food goes scarce for others in the Anishinaabe community they all live in. He’s a respectful hunter, offers the dead moose a bit of tobacco, and he offers it thanks and best wishes. He takes all he needs and heads home.
Right off the bat, he sees that the satellite TV is out, and soon he discovers that his phone is kaput, having no cell service. The “moccasin telegraph” starts up right away, and friends are all talking and communicating via visiting in person and talking face to face. And soon enough, the electricity goes out also.
But the community, as far north in Canada as it is, is far enough from society, and they’re all used to and prepared for being cut off. A generator is up and running, and tribal leaders come together to prepare the community for a hard winter where electric heat is to be shunned, firewood used instead, and food must be eaten sparingly also. The tribal cache of food starts to be doled out to an increasingly restless community, and all are confused and anxious. Nerves are frayed to the limits, and things only start looking even MORE dire when two of the community’s members, boys who have been at university down south, escape from their situation and return home with word that all is chaos and unrest Out There.
Bad news…
The story reeeeeally tightens up when a stranger comes to town, having followed the snowmobile tracks of the two young men. He’s a white guy named Justin Scott, and he’s proud of being a Survivalist. He’s come to seek refuge, a place to stay, but man is he loaded for bear or what? He’s packing an arsenal of weapons, and he smirks and swaggers, and pretty soon he has Evan wishing he’d never laid eyes on the guy.
Things go from bad to worse in the community, and Scott starts playing on people’s fears, starts playing people against each other. He starts rumors, he encourages drinking, and when other refugees snowmobile into town, he guns one down and tells a stunned group to leave the body out there as a warning for other refugees, make them bypass the community.
What I liked, and what Rice no doubt intended loud and clear, is how to survive, members of the community have to shun the new ways and look to the Old. Hunting, yes. Electricity, don’t count on it. Family, important to gather together so as to save firewood and share heat. No TV or heat for school, so families spend time together and kids look to Nature for joy.
Awesome, right. Let’s stop right there, huh? Uhm, nope. Rice goes on and turns Moon of the Crusted Snow into an outright thriller as Scott and Evan continually face off. And I like how Evan, our hero, is very much a flawed character who, even as he turns to the wisdom of the Old Ways, has flashes of despair, loses his temper, questions his thinking.
And it was sooooo galling that yet again, a white man comes in to take advantage of all a community has built for itself.
The writing is taut, the scenes are compelling, the Old Ways are honored even as the dead keep stacking up in the makeshift morgue as want and despair take their toll. Work is done gratefully, and while many in the community start flipping out, and Scott keeps ratcheting up the tension, there are many heroes and friends to root for.
Billy Merasty narrates this just as well as I could’ve wished. His characterizations were great, tho’ I did have some problem with white guy Scott sounding like a smarmy game-show host. But then I realized the man WAS smarmier than all get out, and I enjoyed the rendition. Merasty captured each snarky smirk as well as he did confused or irate community members, and managed to pace his narration in keeping with how the text flowed and unfurled itself. I did, however, have to jack my listening speed from x1.2 to x1.4, but that’s probably more due to the fact that I’m just horRIFic at waiting and seeing; I wanna know how things turn out Right NOW!
Grand listening experience.
And with Rice’s stellar writing of trudging through the snow, of plummeting through crusts of ice into depths of snow below, of rigidly frozen stacked corpses? Jeeeeez, I was sooo cold too, and I couldn’t wait to finish so I could get the frick warm!!!
Give this a try: A guide for how all of us should live in this Pandemic World of ours. Family (via Zoom?), sharing, and for gosh sakes: Avoid smirking and swaggering strangers…!
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