Hello, Radio Readers. I’m Jane Holwerda in Dodge City, Kansas. The third novel in our Fall 2024 Series “Through the Eyes of a Child” is The Blue Book of Nebo, published in 2021, and the work of Welsh author Manon Steffan Ros.
Constructed as a series of diary entries, this slender novel is set in a countryside following some sort of global cataclysm that disrupts governmental infrastructure, resource distribution, social and communication services. Seemingly, the sole human survivors in their region, a mother and child sort out how to live – primarily through their forage of houses of others, dead or presumed so. The mother calls this “borrowing”; her word choice maintains a fragile link to the way of her world before, as is the fact that she and her son collect only what they need as it is needed -- tinned and canned food, tools, blankets, and books.
There are of course people who plan ahead for cataclysms and catastrophes; I was advised fairly recently, for example, to have cash on hand to meet my needs for a year – in case of terrorist attacks or generic collapses of financial systems. Where would I stash it? Would a house safe suffice? Is my house secure? And in some scenarios, what value would currency have? Survivalists and preppers, those who think a lot about eminent disasters, seem more focused on having actual necessities, rather than cash, on hand. They methodically acquire food with 25-year shelf lives and items believed capable of sustaining life as they know it.
Underground bunkers, as during the Cold War years, have been a thing again for some time, not only for storage, but as destinations when bad times hit. Some bunkers, like those currently for sale in Lyons and Saline counties, are less than 1000 square feet but come with expansive surface acreage; others are inverted tower blocks, like one known as Survivor Condo that comprises 15 subterranean levels, allowing for 75 people to live 5 years underground in luxury, including a pool and a swim-up bar and something like 2600 bottles of wine. It has 16,000# blast doors for lock-down, so no one gets in late nor leaves early. All of its units have been sold, a phenomenon that indicates a certain unease about the future, notes one journalist.
Unease and panic, psychologists and others who research such things say, are the causes of hoarding, such as experienced a few years back during the Covid pandemic. I myself find I am still well-stocked in dried beans, dried fruit, lentils and canned soups. Maybe the difference between hoarding and preparing is whether it’s happening in a garage or a bunker….At any rate, from the novel The Blue Book of Nebo the author’s vision of provisioning – to collect what is needed as it is needed—is so arresting, so suggestive of calm and confidence, perhaps even faith in the unendingness of life.
At novel’s end, we read that one night, after 10 years of darkness, the lights of the nearby village illuminate in a “wave of light… and [as if grinning] like fiends,” and giving notice of the bold return of civility and civilization. I kinda hope for a sequel to this novel, to share in the author’s vision for the world renewed, especially for how the survivors of a long critical shutdown then integrate into a restored –or even a new kind of – civilization.
For High Plains Public Radio’s Radio Readers, I’m Jane Holwerda in Dodge City, Kansas.
