Book Chase

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Alternate history, that literary genre in which an historical event is tweaked, removed, or reversed, can be interesting.  It is always great fun to play the “what if game” with the actual events of our shared past: “what if the South had won the Civil War,” “what if the Normandy invasion had failed,” or “what if John Kennedy had not been assassinated?”  Much fascinating fiction has originated from those and similar questions.  Jim Fergus plays a more subtle version of the game in One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd.”  He wonders what might have happened if, in 1875, President Grant and Little Wolf, chief of the Cheyenne nation, had agreed to exchange one thousand white women for an equal number of Indian horses.

Author Jim Fergus

One Thousand White Women is told largely in the words of a series of journals May begins to record almost the moment she decides to make her break for a new life.  Through these journals, we meet May’s colorful traveling companions and learn of their adventures and hardships as they begin their new lives as wives of men with whom they have so little in common.  The women, although they will suffer the hardships of winter encampment, inter-tribal warfare, kidnappings, and one horrible night when their men succumb to the evils of alcohol, find that they are learning as much about what is good and proper in society as they are teaching.  But is it all too late to save the Cheyenne from what the army has planned for them?

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Everyone knows that, one day in 1941, famed British author Virginia Woolf filled her coat pockets with heavy rocks before stepping into the cold waters of the river Ouse. Perhaps because of the extra weight she carried into the water with her, Woolf’s body would not be found until three weeks later. Woolf’s family and friends, aware that she was often in a suicidal frame-of-mind, were not surprised by her end, so the official verdict of suicide was never challenged. Now, in an intriguing piece of alternate history, The White Garden, Stephanie Barron examines the possibilities of what may have happened during the three weeks between Woolf’s disappearance and the recovery of her body in the Ouse.

The White Garden works because of the way Barron mixes her intriguing plot of alternate history with a large cast of interesting characters. Admittedly, some of the characters are a little too close to stereotypes to be completely effective but, in the context of the story, even those characters contribute to the fun. Fans of Virginia Woolf, and Anglophiles of all stripes, are likely to enjoy this one a great deal. I certainly did.

Really good alternate history does more than simply speculate about one or two of the limitless “what if” possibilities offered by the past. In the best writing of this type those “what ifs” are just starting points for stories that go well beyond the big picture to consider what the historical changes would mean to ordinary people caught up in their wake. Resistance, Owen Sheens’ debut novel, does exactly that, and does it remarkably well.

What if the allied invasion of France had been repelled by a German army fully prepared to meet the invaders on the beaches of Normandy? What if that failed invasion resulted in such a devastating defeat for the Allies that Germany was almost immediately able to land her soldiers on England’s southern coast and begin a march to London?

The women of the isolated Olchon Valley of Wales did not even have time to wonder “what if” before they woke up one morning to find that every one of their husbands and sons had vanished, leaving behind nothing to indicate where they had gone or when they might return. But Maggie, oldest of the women, knew in her heart that the men would be gone for a long time when she saw that her husband William had left their cows un-milked, something he had never done in all their years together. She was able to convince the rest of the women that their husbands had joined the resistance, something they hardly dare speak of even among themselves, and that it is their duty to work the farms on their own while their men were away.

And that is exactly what they try to do until a small German patrol suddenly appears in the valley on a mission of its own. Despite the women’s efforts to disguise the absence of the valley’s men, Captain Albrecht Wolfram quickly reaches the correct conclusion that the women are alone and that their husbands are involved in fighting the German invasion. Albrecht knows that he should report the situation to his superiors but he realizes that, if he does so, everyone in the valley will be killed as an example of what will happen to the families of others who join the underground resistance. Albrecht has already seen the worst that war has to offer and he does not have the stomach to cause the deaths of these innocent women. He, in fact, realizes that his patrol has dropped through the cracks of the German command and decides to keep his men safely in the valley long after their initial mission has been completed.

When harsh winter weather sets in, making it impossible for the soldiers to leave the valley even if they want to, both the women and the soldiers come to realize that they must depend on each other for survival. The women grudgingly reach the conclusion that their resistance is no longer possible. Out of necessity the two groups learn to accommodate each other and over the long winter months personal relationships change to the point that both sides almost forget that they are at war with each other. What they have in common is more important than their differences.

But seasons change, and winter is always followed by spring. Warmer weather opens the valley to the outside world again and the realities of life under a ruthless occupying force. Are the women in more danger from German reprisal or from their neighbors who see them as collaborators? Should they have done more to resist the valley’s invaders? What will their husbands think of them? Those are just some of the questions that readers will ponder long after they turn the last page of Resistance.

This one is not to be missed.

Rated at: 5.0

Really good alternate history does more than simply speculate about one or two of the limitless “what if” possibilities offered by the past. In the best writing of this type those “what ifs” are just starting points for stories that go well beyond the big picture to consider what the historical changes would mean to ordinary people caught up in their wake. Resistance, Owen Sheens’ debut novel, does exactly that, and does it remarkably well.

What if the allied invasion of France had been repelled by a German army fully prepared to meet the invaders on the beaches of Normandy? What if that failed invasion resulted in such a devastating defeat for the Allies that Germany was almost immediately able to land her soldiers on England’s southern coast and begin a march to London?

The women of the isolated Olchon Valley of Wales did not even have time to wonder “what if” before they woke up one morning to find that every one of their husbands and sons had vanished, leaving behind nothing to indicate where they had gone or when they might return. But Maggie, oldest of the women, knew in her heart that the men would be gone for a long time when she saw that her husband William had left their cows un-milked, something he had never done in all their years together. She was able to convince the rest of the women that their husbands had joined the resistance, something they hardly dare speak of even among themselves, and that it is their duty to work the farms on their own while their men were away.

And that is exactly what they try to do until a small German patrol suddenly appears in the valley on a mission of its own. Despite the women’s efforts to disguise the absence of the valley’s men, Captain Albrecht Wolfram quickly reaches the correct conclusion that the women are alone and that their husbands are involved in fighting the German invasion. Albrecht knows that he should report the situation to his superiors but he realizes that, if he does so, everyone in the valley will be killed as an example of what will happen to the families of others who join the underground resistance. Albrecht has already seen the worst that war has to offer and he does not have the stomach to cause the deaths of these innocent women. He, in fact, realizes that his patrol has dropped through the cracks of the German command and decides to keep his men safely in the valley long after their initial mission has been completed.

When harsh winter weather sets in, making it impossible for the soldiers to leave the valley even if they want to, both the women and the soldiers come to realize that they must depend on each other for survival. The women grudgingly reach the conclusion that their resistance is no longer possible. Out of necessity the two groups learn to accommodate each other and over the long winter months personal relationships change to the point that both sides almost forget that they are at war with each other. What they have in common is more important than their differences.

But seasons change, and winter is always followed by spring. Warmer weather opens the valley to the outside world again and the realities of life under a ruthless occupying force. Are the women in more danger from German reprisal or from their neighbors who see them as collaborators? Should they have done more to resist the valley’s invaders? What will their husbands think of them? Those are just some of the questions that readers will ponder long after they turn the last page of Resistance.

This one is not to be missed.

Rated at: 5.0

>Really good alternate history does more than simply speculate about one or two of the limitless “what if” possibilities offered by the past. In the best writing of this type those “what ifs” are just starting points for stories that go well beyond the big picture to consider what the historical changes would mean to ordinary people caught up in their wake. Resistance, Owen Sheens’ debut novel, does exactly that, and does it remarkably well.

What if the allied invasion of France had been repelled by a German army fully prepared to meet the invaders on the beaches of Normandy? What if that failed invasion resulted in such a devastating defeat for the Allies that Germany was almost immediately able to land her soldiers on England’s southern coast and begin a march to London?

The women of the isolated Olchon Valley of Wales did not even have time to wonder “what if” before they woke up one morning to find that every one of their husbands and sons had vanished, leaving behind nothing to indicate where they had gone or when they might return. But Maggie, oldest of the women, knew in her heart that the men would be gone for a long time when she saw that her husband William had left their cows un-milked, something he had never done in all their years together. She was able to convince the rest of the women that their husbands had joined the resistance, something they hardly dare speak of even among themselves, and that it is their duty to work the farms on their own while their men were away.

And that is exactly what they try to do until a small German patrol suddenly appears in the valley on a mission of its own. Despite the women’s efforts to disguise the absence of the valley’s men, Captain Albrecht Wolfram quickly reaches the correct conclusion that the women are alone and that their husbands are involved in fighting the German invasion. Albrecht knows that he should report the situation to his superiors but he realizes that, if he does so, everyone in the valley will be killed as an example of what will happen to the families of others who join the underground resistance. Albrecht has already seen the worst that war has to offer and he does not have the stomach to cause the deaths of these innocent women. He, in fact, realizes that his patrol has dropped through the cracks of the German command and decides to keep his men safely in the valley long after their initial mission has been completed.

When harsh winter weather sets in, making it impossible for the soldiers to leave the valley even if they want to, both the women and the soldiers come to realize that they must depend on each other for survival. The women grudgingly reach the conclusion that their resistance is no longer possible. Out of necessity the two groups learn to accommodate each other and over the long winter months personal relationships change to the point that both sides almost forget that they are at war with each other. What they have in common is more important than their differences.

But seasons change, and winter is always followed by spring. Warmer weather opens the valley to the outside world again and the realities of life under a ruthless occupying force. Are the women in more danger from German reprisal or from their neighbors who see them as collaborators? Should they have done more to resist the valley’s invaders? What will their husbands think of them? Those are just some of the questions that readers will ponder long after they turn the last page of Resistance.

This one is not to be missed.

Rated at: 5.0

Written in 1970, this pessimistic time travel novel, a Hugo Award finalist, begins in 1978 when Brain Cheney is more or less drafted into a mysterious government project. Chaney is a Biblical scholar of sorts whose book debunking certain ancient scrolls has irritated many Christians around the country but he is also a professional demographer and has already produced one report for the government predicting how current trends will impact the near future. The government believes him to be perfect for this new project. Who better to send into the future in the new time machine invented by the Bureau of Weights and Measures than a man experienced in predicting that very future?

Interestingly, Brian Cheney and the two military officers drafted into the project with him travel only as far as twenty years into the future, to the turn of the new century, because government officials are so concerned with what they see as a dark future for the United States that they hope to learn enough from the time travel to change that future. Today’s readers, of course, have lived beyond the years visited by these time travelers so their adventurous trip into the future has become our past. As a result, The Year of the Quiet Sun reads as much like an alternate history novel at times as it does as a story of time travel.

Cheney, the only civilian time-traveler of the team, has little regard for politicians and resents the way that the President and his staff order that the first trip into the future be only to 1980 so that the President can determine whether or not he will be re-elected. The three travelers, who can go into the future only one-at-a-time due to the limitations of their vehicle, get that information for him but they also return to 1978 with news of the tremendous unrest and violence that is already impacting the future of America’s major cities, especially Chicago. It is when they are sent forward to 2000, and just beyond, to learn the effectiveness of the President’s attempt to save the country that the novel really takes off.

The second half of the book centers itself around realistic military skirmishes between government troops and the rebels who are intent on overthrowing the government with help from the Chinese, but it also details the evolving relationships of the three time- travelers and the head of their project, the beautiful Katherine with whom two of the men have become particularly smitten. Readers who may have found the pace of the book’s first half to be a bit slow in its set-up of the second half action will find themselves well-rewarded for staying with the book to the end. Tucker’s vision of the horrible future that could have resulted from the radicalism of the 1960s and early 1970s is a horrifying one.

Tucker even saves a nice little surprise for his readers until near the end, one that more astute readers than me may figure out earlier, but one that made me laugh out loud at its cleverness.

Rated at: 4.0

Written in 1970, this pessimistic time travel novel, a Hugo Award finalist, begins in 1978 when Brain Cheney is more or less drafted into a mysterious government project. Chaney is a Biblical scholar of sorts whose book debunking certain ancient scrolls has irritated many Christians around the country but he is also a professional demographer and has already produced one report for the government predicting how current trends will impact the near future. The government believes him to be perfect for this new project. Who better to send into the future in the new time machine invented by the Bureau of Weights and Measures than a man experienced in predicting that very future?

Interestingly, Brian Cheney and the two military officers drafted into the project with him travel only as far as twenty years into the future, to the turn of the new century, because government officials are so concerned with what they see as a dark future for the United States that they hope to learn enough from the time travel to change that future. Today’s readers, of course, have lived beyond the years visited by these time travelers so their adventurous trip into the future has become our past. As a result, The Year of the Quiet Sun reads as much like an alternate history novel at times as it does as a story of time travel.

Cheney, the only civilian time-traveler of the team, has little regard for politicians and resents the way that the President and his staff order that the first trip into the future be only to 1980 so that the President can determine whether or not he will be re-elected. The three travelers, who can go into the future only one-at-a-time due to the limitations of their vehicle, get that information for him but they also return to 1978 with news of the tremendous unrest and violence that is already impacting the future of America’s major cities, especially Chicago. It is when they are sent forward to 2000, and just beyond, to learn the effectiveness of the President’s attempt to save the country that the novel really takes off.

The second half of the book centers itself around realistic military skirmishes between government troops and the rebels who are intent on overthrowing the government with help from the Chinese, but it also details the evolving relationships of the three time- travelers and the head of their project, the beautiful Katherine with whom two of the men have become particularly smitten. Readers who may have found the pace of the book’s first half to be a bit slow in its set-up of the second half action will find themselves well-rewarded for staying with the book to the end. Tucker’s vision of the horrible future that could have resulted from the radicalism of the 1960s and early 1970s is a horrifying one.

Tucker even saves a nice little surprise for his readers until near the end, one that more astute readers than me may figure out earlier, but one that made me laugh out loud at its cleverness.

Rated at: 4.0

>Written in 1970, this pessimistic time travel novel, a Hugo Award finalist, begins in 1978 when Brain Cheney is more or less drafted into a mysterious government project. Chaney is a Biblical scholar of sorts whose book debunking certain ancient scrolls has irritated many Christians around the country but he is also a professional demographer and has already produced one report for the government predicting how current trends will impact the near future. The government believes him to be perfect for this new project. Who better to send into the future in the new time machine invented by the Bureau of Weights and Measures than a man experienced in predicting that very future?

Interestingly, Brian Cheney and the two military officers drafted into the project with him travel only as far as twenty years into the future, to the turn of the new century, because government officials are so concerned with what they see as a dark future for the United States that they hope to learn enough from the time travel to change that future. Today’s readers, of course, have lived beyond the years visited by these time travelers so their adventurous trip into the future has become our past. As a result, The Year of the Quiet Sun reads as much like an alternate history novel at times as it does as a story of time travel.

Cheney, the only civilian time-traveler of the team, has little regard for politicians and resents the way that the President and his staff order that the first trip into the future be only to 1980 so that the President can determine whether or not he will be re-elected. The three travelers, who can go into the future only one-at-a-time due to the limitations of their vehicle, get that information for him but they also return to 1978 with news of the tremendous unrest and violence that is already impacting the future of America’s major cities, especially Chicago. It is when they are sent forward to 2000, and just beyond, to learn the effectiveness of the President’s attempt to save the country that the novel really takes off.

The second half of the book centers itself around realistic military skirmishes between government troops and the rebels who are intent on overthrowing the government with help from the Chinese, but it also details the evolving relationships of the three time- travelers and the head of their project, the beautiful Katherine with whom two of the men have become particularly smitten. Readers who may have found the pace of the book’s first half to be a bit slow in its set-up of the second half action will find themselves well-rewarded for staying with the book to the end. Tucker’s vision of the horrible future that could have resulted from the radicalism of the 1960s and early 1970s is a horrifying one.

Tucker even saves a nice little surprise for his readers until near the end, one that more astute readers than me may figure out earlier, but one that made me laugh out loud at its cleverness.

Rated at: 4.0

The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick’s Hugo Award winning 1962 novel, is credited by many with the creation of the alternate history genre. It may not have been the first alternate history novel published but it does seem to be the one that jump-started the genre. And what an alternate history is tells.

Franklin Roosevelt was assassinated in the early years of the Great Depression and America’s contribution to the Allied efforts during World War II were limited by its delayed recovery from those disastrous years. In fact, Germany and Japan have won the war and have pretty much divided the globe between them, with Japan in control of Asia and Germany of Europe and Africa. Even the United States has been divided between the two: Japan has the western part of the country, Germany the eastern part and there is a buffer of “free states” between the two sections. Almost twenty years later, Germany, still determined to finish its extermination of the Jews, has decided to do the same to dark-skinned peoples and has turned Africa into a massive killing ground.

Japan, on the other hand, rules its territories under the rule of law and those living in the San Francisco area, where much of the novel takes place, are the lucky ones. Americans, especially white-skinned ones, are definitely second class citizens in the Pacific States of America, but they do not live in fear the way that residents of the German territory do. However, Germany is the more powerful of the two superpowers and is able to demand the handover of all Jews identified in the PSA.

The Man in the High Castle focuses on ordinary Americans, many of whom were children during the war and who do not remember much of pre-war life, as they try to make their way from day-to-day. Dick cleverly included one character, Hawthorn Abendsen, who has written an alternate history of his own, a book called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy in which Germany and Japan lost the war (an alternate history within an alternate history). The world described in Abendsen’s book is very different from the real world and is an irritant to both the Germans and the Japanese. But, as usual, it is the Germans who want to take things to the extreme by exacting their revenge on the author and German authorities have sent someone to infiltrate Abendsen’s supposed fortress of a hideout.

Dick chose to end The Man in the High Castle in such an abrupt and ambiguous manner that most readers will be left scratching their heads and trying to reconcile 99% of the book’s content to what is disclosed on its last three pages. Readers usually enjoy surprise endings but this is not a very satisfying one and they are likely to find it more annoying than surprising, something that will ruin their overall perception of the novel. I found the core of Dick’s plot to be well crafted and enjoyable but the book’s ending is the reason I cannot rate it higher than I have.

Rated at: 3.0

The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick’s Hugo Award winning 1962 novel, is credited by many with the creation of the alternate history genre. It may not have been the first alternate history novel published but it does seem to be the one that jump-started the genre. And what an alternate history is tells.

Franklin Roosevelt was assassinated in the early years of the Great Depression and America’s contribution to the Allied efforts during World War II were limited by its delayed recovery from those disastrous years. In fact, Germany and Japan have won the war and have pretty much divided the globe between them, with Japan in control of Asia and Germany of Europe and Africa. Even the United States has been divided between the two: Japan has the western part of the country, Germany the eastern part and there is a buffer of “free states” between the two sections. Almost twenty years later, Germany, still determined to finish its extermination of the Jews, has decided to do the same to dark-skinned peoples and has turned Africa into a massive killing ground.

Japan, on the other hand, rules its territories under the rule of law and those living in the San Francisco area, where much of the novel takes place, are the lucky ones. Americans, especially white-skinned ones, are definitely second class citizens in the Pacific States of America, but they do not live in fear the way that residents of the German territory do. However, Germany is the more powerful of the two superpowers and is able to demand the handover of all Jews identified in the PSA.

The Man in the High Castle focuses on ordinary Americans, many of whom were children during the war and who do not remember much of pre-war life, as they try to make their way from day-to-day. Dick cleverly included one character, Hawthorn Abendsen, who has written an alternate history of his own, a book called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy in which Germany and Japan lost the war (an alternate history within an alternate history). The world described in Abendsen’s book is very different from the real world and is an irritant to both the Germans and the Japanese. But, as usual, it is the Germans who want to take things to the extreme by exacting their revenge on the author and German authorities have sent someone to infiltrate Abendsen’s supposed fortress of a hideout.

Dick chose to end The Man in the High Castle in such an abrupt and ambiguous manner that most readers will be left scratching their heads and trying to reconcile 99% of the book’s content to what is disclosed on its last three pages. Readers usually enjoy surprise endings but this is not a very satisfying one and they are likely to find it more annoying than surprising, something that will ruin their overall perception of the novel. I found the core of Dick’s plot to be well crafted and enjoyable but the book’s ending is the reason I cannot rate it higher than I have.

Rated at: 3.0

>The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick’s Hugo Award winning 1962 novel, is credited by many with the creation of the alternate history genre. It may not have been the first alternate history novel published but it does seem to be the one that jump-started the genre. And what an alternate history is tells.

Franklin Roosevelt was assassinated in the early years of the Great Depression and America’s contribution to the Allied efforts during World War II were limited by its delayed recovery from those disastrous years. In fact, Germany and Japan have won the war and have pretty much divided the globe between them, with Japan in control of Asia and Germany of Europe and Africa. Even the United States has been divided between the two: Japan has the western part of the country, Germany the eastern part and there is a buffer of “free states” between the two sections. Almost twenty years later, Germany, still determined to finish its extermination of the Jews, has decided to do the same to dark-skinned peoples and has turned Africa into a massive killing ground.

Japan, on the other hand, rules its territories under the rule of law and those living in the San Francisco area, where much of the novel takes place, are the lucky ones. Americans, especially white-skinned ones, are definitely second class citizens in the Pacific States of America, but they do not live in fear the way that residents of the German territory do. However, Germany is the more powerful of the two superpowers and is able to demand the handover of all Jews identified in the PSA.

The Man in the High Castle focuses on ordinary Americans, many of whom were children during the war and who do not remember much of pre-war life, as they try to make their way from day-to-day. Dick cleverly included one character, Hawthorn Abendsen, who has written an alternate history of his own, a book called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy in which Germany and Japan lost the war (an alternate history within an alternate history). The world described in Abendsen’s book is very different from the real world and is an irritant to both the Germans and the Japanese. But, as usual, it is the Germans who want to take things to the extreme by exacting their revenge on the author and German authorities have sent someone to infiltrate Abendsen’s supposed fortress of a hideout.

Dick chose to end The Man in the High Castle in such an abrupt and ambiguous manner that most readers will be left scratching their heads and trying to reconcile 99% of the book’s content to what is disclosed on its last three pages. Readers usually enjoy surprise endings but this is not a very satisfying one and they are likely to find it more annoying than surprising, something that will ruin their overall perception of the novel. I found the core of Dick’s plot to be well crafted and enjoyable but the book’s ending is the reason I cannot rate it higher than I have.

Rated at: 3.0

October 1962 was a nerve-wracking time for most Americans but it was only much later that I learned that I probably should have been closer to “terrified” than to “nervous.” I remember well reading the headlines and short articles in my thin local newspaper about the confrontation between Khrushchev and Kennedy that was happening in Cuba. There was a sense of great danger in the articles but I don’t recall talking with anyone who really believed that Russia and the United States would actually fire nuclear missiles at each other over the incident. Of course, I was only 14 at the time and may have been spared the truth about what adults were really thinking, but subsequent release of details about the confrontation show how utterly naïve so many of us were. (I do remember one of the infamous nuclear bomb drills, the old “duck and cover” routine, at my school that week but even that didn’t really scare me since I had already experienced several of those silly things.)

Resurrection Day, by Brendan DuBois, starts with the Kennedy-Khrushchev stalemate over the nuclear-tipped missiles that Khrushchev was installing in Cuba at Castro’s “invitation.” But DuBois takes an alternate path, the path we came so close to actually following, and explores what might have happened if Khrushchev had not blinked at nearly the last possible moment and agreed to remove his nuclear weapons from Cuba.

Ten years later, 1972-America has still not recovered from the devastation of the short war with Russia. Washington D.C. is still a blank spot on the map, New York City is off limits and has been fenced in by the military, and the country is still partially dependent on food supplies from Great Britain in order to feed people in its major cities. Russia has been effectively wiped off the map and its survivors forced into primitive living conditions in which their long term survival is still in doubt. It seems that the Soviet arsenal was greatly overrated and contained far fewer missiles capable of reaching the U.S. than had been thought before the war.

Carl Landry, military veteran turned Boston newspaper reporter, opens up a can of worms when he refuses to end his investigation into the murder of an old man who had contacted him with promises of a huge story. Despite being warned off the story by his editor and the paper’s resident military censor, Landry keeps snooping around and begins to uncover, with the help of his new British girlfriend, secrets about the true condition of New York City, the upcoming presidential election, and a plot between British and American military forces.

Brendan DuBois has created an intriguing version of America struggling to recover from the loss of its major city and its capitol. It is an America in which many want to believe that Kennedy survived the destruction of Washington D.C. and will return to power with a plan to rebuild the country while others despise him and blame him for being so trigger happy that he started a war that resulted in the deaths of millions of Americans and Russians. It is a world in which most of America’s former allies seem to delight in the fact that she is on her knees and needs their help, a condition in which some wish her to remain forever more. It is a country filled with paranoid citizens who truly do have to worry about being watched, arrested, and sent to detoxification camps if they say the wrong things to the wrong people.

Resurrection Day is not perfect. It probably overstates the difficulty that America would have rebounding from the kind of limited nuclear war described, one she actually won, and some of the characters, particularly the chief villain of the piece, are a bit on the stereotypical side and the ending feels a little too formulaic, too much like the culmination of so many other “spy thrillers,” But fans of alternate history will appreciate the world that DuBois created for us to ponder and should take a look at Resurrection Day.

Rated at: 3.5

October 1962 was a nerve-wracking time for most Americans but it was only much later that I learned that I probably should have been closer to “terrified” than to “nervous.” I remember well reading the headlines and short articles in my thin local newspaper about the confrontation between Khrushchev and Kennedy that was happening in Cuba. There was a sense of great danger in the articles but I don’t recall talking with anyone who really believed that Russia and the United States would actually fire nuclear missiles at each other over the incident. Of course, I was only 14 at the time and may have been spared the truth about what adults were really thinking, but subsequent release of details about the confrontation show how utterly naïve so many of us were. (I do remember one of the infamous nuclear bomb drills, the old “duck and cover” routine, at my school that week but even that didn’t really scare me since I had already experienced several of those silly things.)

Resurrection Day, by Brendan DuBois, starts with the Kennedy-Khrushchev stalemate over the nuclear-tipped missiles that Khrushchev was installing in Cuba at Castro’s “invitation.” But DuBois takes an alternate path, the path we came so close to actually following, and explores what might have happened if Khrushchev had not blinked at nearly the last possible moment and agreed to remove his nuclear weapons from Cuba.

Ten years later, 1972-America has still not recovered from the devastation of the short war with Russia. Washington D.C. is still a blank spot on the map, New York City is off limits and has been fenced in by the military, and the country is still partially dependent on food supplies from Great Britain in order to feed people in its major cities. Russia has been effectively wiped off the map and its survivors forced into primitive living conditions in which their long term survival is still in doubt. It seems that the Soviet arsenal was greatly overrated and contained far fewer missiles capable of reaching the U.S. than had been thought before the war.

Carl Landry, military veteran turned Boston newspaper reporter, opens up a can of worms when he refuses to end his investigation into the murder of an old man who had contacted him with promises of a huge story. Despite being warned off the story by his editor and the paper’s resident military censor, Landry keeps snooping around and begins to uncover, with the help of his new British girlfriend, secrets about the true condition of New York City, the upcoming presidential election, and a plot between British and American military forces.

Brendan DuBois has created an intriguing version of America struggling to recover from the loss of its major city and its capitol. It is an America in which many want to believe that Kennedy survived the destruction of Washington D.C. and will return to power with a plan to rebuild the country while others despise him and blame him for being so trigger happy that he started a war that resulted in the deaths of millions of Americans and Russians. It is a world in which most of America’s former allies seem to delight in the fact that she is on her knees and needs their help, a condition in which some wish her to remain forever more. It is a country filled with paranoid citizens who truly do have to worry about being watched, arrested, and sent to detoxification camps if they say the wrong things to the wrong people.

Resurrection Day is not perfect. It probably overstates the difficulty that America would have rebounding from the kind of limited nuclear war described, one she actually won, and some of the characters, particularly the chief villain of the piece, are a bit on the stereotypical side and the ending feels a little too formulaic, too much like the culmination of so many other “spy thrillers,” But fans of alternate history will appreciate the world that DuBois created for us to ponder and should take a look at Resurrection Day.

Rated at: 3.5

>October 1962 was a nerve-wracking time for most Americans but it was only much later that I learned that I probably should have been closer to “terrified” than to “nervous.” I remember well reading the headlines and short articles in my thin local newspaper about the confrontation between Khrushchev and Kennedy that was happening in Cuba. There was a sense of great danger in the articles but I don’t recall talking with anyone who really believed that Russia and the United States would actually fire nuclear missiles at each other over the incident. Of course, I was only 14 at the time and may have been spared the truth about what adults were really thinking, but subsequent release of details about the confrontation show how utterly naïve so many of us were. (I do remember one of the infamous nuclear bomb drills, the old “duck and cover” routine, at my school that week but even that didn’t really scare me since I had already experienced several of those silly things.)

Resurrection Day, by Brendan DuBois, starts with the Kennedy-Khrushchev stalemate over the nuclear-tipped missiles that Khrushchev was installing in Cuba at Castro’s “invitation.” But DuBois takes an alternate path, the path we came so close to actually following, and explores what might have happened if Khrushchev had not blinked at nearly the last possible moment and agreed to remove his nuclear weapons from Cuba.

Ten years later, 1972-America has still not recovered from the devastation of the short war with Russia. Washington D.C. is still a blank spot on the map, New York City is off limits and has been fenced in by the military, and the country is still partially dependent on food supplies from Great Britain in order to feed people in its major cities. Russia has been effectively wiped off the map and its survivors forced into primitive living conditions in which their long term survival is still in doubt. It seems that the Soviet arsenal was greatly overrated and contained far fewer missiles capable of reaching the U.S. than had been thought before the war.

Carl Landry, military veteran turned Boston newspaper reporter, opens up a can of worms when he refuses to end his investigation into the murder of an old man who had contacted him with promises of a huge story. Despite being warned off the story by his editor and the paper’s resident military censor, Landry keeps snooping around and begins to uncover, with the help of his new British girlfriend, secrets about the true condition of New York City, the upcoming presidential election, and a plot between British and American military forces.

Brendan DuBois has created an intriguing version of America struggling to recover from the loss of its major city and its capitol. It is an America in which many want to believe that Kennedy survived the destruction of Washington D.C. and will return to power with a plan to rebuild the country while others despise him and blame him for being so trigger happy that he started a war that resulted in the deaths of millions of Americans and Russians. It is a world in which most of America’s former allies seem to delight in the fact that she is on her knees and needs their help, a condition in which some wish her to remain forever more. It is a country filled with paranoid citizens who truly do have to worry about being watched, arrested, and sent to detoxification camps if they say the wrong things to the wrong people.

Resurrection Day is not perfect. It probably overstates the difficulty that America would have rebounding from the kind of limited nuclear war described, one she actually won, and some of the characters, particularly the chief villain of the piece, are a bit on the stereotypical side and the ending feels a little too formulaic, too much like the culmination of so many other “spy thrillers,” But fans of alternate history will appreciate the world that DuBois created for us to ponder and should take a look at Resurrection Day.

Rated at: 3.5