MOON OF THE TURNING LEAVES

This is the long-awaited novel about a group of indigenous people who re-emerge from the northern bush 10 years after an apocalypse forced them there, to see what shape the outside world is in. They are running short of food and hope to be able to go home. Although it is a sequel to MOON OF THE CRUSTED SNOW, it stands alone.

Twelve years have passed since a widespread blackout triggered the rapid collapse of society, when the constants of the old world - cell service, landlines, satellite and internet - disappeared. Twelve long years since the steady supply of food and fuel from the south became a thing of the past.

The sudden end of the world as everybody knew it, and the horrors of that first winter since everything became dark, only steeled the resolve of Evan Whitesky and the other members of the Anishinaabe community to survive on their own terms. Because the world wasn't ending, as the community elders reminded them. It had already ended with the original displacement of their people to the far north by colonial authorities. They have seen this "apocalypse" before. They've seen it - lived it - over and over. But they had always survived. And they will survive this too.

Now, years after the power went out, the community has reconnected with its Anishinaabe customs based on living on the land. Empowered and stronger than ever, Evan, his teenage daughter Nangohns, and a small team of resourceful community members have resolved to venture south on a four-month-long exploratory mission to their ancestral homelands on Georgian Bay and to discover the cause of the mysterious catastrophe that had plunged the world into darkness.

On their journey they will encounter settlements born from the ashes of what was once Canadian civilization - some ruled by order and others by chaos, vigilantes, and terrible violence. But whatever the challenges Evan, Nangohns, and their colleagues face, hope continues to drive them forward, leading them ultimately to an astounding discovery at destination's end.

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 and was published in French in 2017. His latest novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, was released in October 2018.