Greetings from Goodwell, in the Oklahoma Panhandle! I’m Marjory Hall with a BookByte for the Radio Reader’s Series. What are the criteria by which we determine whether a life is so-called good or bad? In The Blue Book of Nebo, Manon Steffan Ros depicts a scenario in which a family that survived a catastrophe known simply as “The End” has the chance to make just such a determination. What they decide is not at all what one might expect.
As I began reading, I was prepared to observe the struggle of people plunged into a technological and social desert. Of course, all the conveniences that people thoughtlessly enjoy today are suddenly gone, as are nearly all the people. Rowenna’s wise preparation and pragmatism are integral to their survival after the disaster, but that is only the frame of the story. The book starts when Dylan is fourteen years old, eight years after The End, and the first-person narration which he shares with his mother is about a family that is thriving, not merely surviving.
Dylan seems to have abandoned whatever he remembers about his previous life in favor of the satisfaction and sense of purpose he finds in his new life. Out of the necessity of supporting her son, Rowenna has adapted to a world without electricity, running water, and shops in which to purchase food, but Dylan is flourishing. He is free from the learned conventions that would discourage him from trying new things, so he creatively utilizes the detritus of a disappeared civilization to provide for himself and his mother. It is interesting to speculate what shape the boy’s ingenuity might have taken had the course of his life not been disrupted. Would his creativity have been lost to the screen of a video game?
Free of the influence of peers, social media, and popular culture, Dylan remains naïve about life, even into his teen years. He understands that there was a different way of life in the past, and he would not mind if a pizza were delivered to his door or if he could meet a pretty girl, but Dylan demonstrates no resentment at the loss of things he was too young to truly appreciate before the catastrophe. An avid reader, the narrator learns a great deal about life, but more importantly, Dylan contemplates all that he does not know. After recording this realization in the blue book, however, he simply moves on to his next thought, and this is why Dylan is such a memorable character.
Dylan is not afraid of what he does not understand. He takes life as it comes without comparing his present with any mythical good old days. Whether he encounters tragedy or wonder, Dylan takes it in, fully participating in the events that make up his life. He and his mother are aware that, despite all that is gone, they still have what is good. The difficulties of everyday life are not cause for resentment because they are the ways in which he and Rowenna care for one another. Dylan reflects on how “[i]t’s lovely to have something small and soft to love” (79). What might seem like hell to some has become an unlikely sort of utopia.
The last scene of the book, far from wrapping up the story and allowing Rowenna and Dylan to live happily ever after, is a pivotal moment in the characters’ lives. How they approach it will determine all that comes afterward. When I came to the end of the book, I desperately wanted to know what would happen next. Isn’t that the mark of a good book? I felt hopeful, believing that the mother and son would craft their future just as they approached the blue book when they found it. Dylan and Rowenna live their lives and write their stories in the active voice, with courage and optimism, seeing each white page “blank and wide, like a new day” (8).
I’m Marjory Hall with a Radio Readers’ BookByte.
