More than one friend lately has warned me to be prepared for challenges ahead--the kind which happen when our world, that of the "English," falls apart after a solar storm fries all systems and wires, machines and networks. Harrowing, but a scenario, scientists warn, that may bring down civilization, at least as we know it. In its wake, or out of its immediate impact to some extent, the Amish in this novel prepare for themselves, and against the gunshots, looters, and refugees to come.
This does not give away the plot. The blurbs and dust jacket copy say as much. What's left for the reader is David Williams' sparely told account in the voice of a family man. We see the before as well as the during of the catastrophe, and his journal records the events in simple prose, devoid of any effect fancier than some Scriptural allusions. The one striking me most: vultures around a corpse.
The narrative device of one character who predicts the end times ahead felt too literary, and the plot did not need this, but I suppose the author by this conceit wants to show the dependence on the wider world that even the Amish need, when it comes to medicine for their illnesses, and sales for their labor. It also connects the narrator's family to one on the outside, and widens the circle of concern.
I read this over a longer than expected (five-plus hours) wait at a car dealer for repairs, so I took my time with this brief book. I also paid attention around me to what the narrator recalls from his visits to the world of the "English." "I remember how people would walk around not even seeing each other, eyes down in their rectangles of light. No one was where they were." (27) A fresh take on a familiar subject. This novel does place you in the Pennsylvania district, neither romanticized or sensationalized. Again, it's honest report of a twist on the apocalyptic trope of speculative fiction.
For one representative person outside the farmlands and old ways, the narrator reckons the biblical analogy holds true. "The sorrows are planted, and they grow strong in the earth of his life, they rise up, and there is harvest." A Presbyterian elder, the author seems to be able to think in the style of a believer, and to channel his tamped down, unassuming chronicle in the mindset of one "non-modern."
For modernity, as it collapses, reveals unsurprisingly that we city folks cannot survive this meltdown. Guns prove a regression to another sort of tradition, as militias brandish them to make the narrator wonder the worth of a life like his protected by such. The lesson does not need hyperbole. Dimly remembering the unnamed cartoon "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," the teller tells us: "you never knew when the magic you rely on will overtake and drown you." The magical realm we all live in enables these words in print, and my review beamed by its medium. So we reflect. (Amazon US 11/11/17)
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