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    Moon of the Crusted Snow: A Novel
    Moon of the Crusted Snow: A Novel
    Moon of the Crusted Snow: A Novel
    Audiobook6 hours

    Moon of the Crusted Snow: A Novel

    Written by Waubgeshig Rice

    Narrated by Billy Merasty

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    A daring post-apocalyptic novel from a powerful rising literary voice

    With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow.

    The community leadership loses its grip on power as the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve. Tensions rise and, as the months pass, so does the death toll due to sickness and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again. Guided through the chaos by an unlikely leader named Evan Whitesky, they endeavor to restore order while grappling with a grave decision.

    Blending action and allegory, Moon of the Crusted Snow upends our expectations. Out of catastrophe comes resilience. And as one society collapses, another is reborn.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherECW Press
    Release dateDec 3, 2018
    ISBN9781773053769
    Author

    Waubgeshig Rice

    Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist originally from Wasauksing First Nation. His books include the Independent Publishers Book Award–winning short story collection Midnight Sweatlodge and the national bestselling novel Moon of the Crusted Snow. Reporting for CBC News for the bulk of his journalism career, in 2014 he received the Anishinabek Nation’s Debwewin Citation for excellence in First Nation Storytelling and from 2018 to 2020 he hosted Up North, CBC Radio’s afternoon show for northern Ontario.

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    Reviews for Moon of the Crusted Snow

    4/5

    655 ratings43 reviews

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    • 5/5
      The only thing I wished was different about this novel is that there was more of it! I wanted to keep following the characters on their journey into this scary new world!
    • 3/5
      Enjoyed it. Slow and ominous. Definitely kept me turning the pages.
    • 4/5
      Completely missed the part where this was post-apocalyptic fiction so the ending was a real shocker let me tell you. I legitimately believed this was non fiction/based on a true story for 90% of the book
    • 4/5
      It was a really pleasant read, interesting to see a community at the margins cope with an apocalypse, but I was waiting for the action to reach a high point amidst the daily life, but then it was just over. I enjoyed reading it but had it been longer and had more drama actually happened, it would have been better.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book very much, it was hard sometimes but very few to stay engaged however it picked up for me. It was different and I especially liked the storytelling aspect of it. I learned a lot from this book and will definitely keep an eye out for this writer. It’s a slow paced book and in the end I grew an appreciation for its pace. I was definitely shocked in the end! Good little read.
    • 3/5
      3.5 ⭐
      not bad I just had high expectations and I wanted more
    • 4/5
      Strangely, this book was really good... But I struggled to stay engaged with it. For a book that painted a bleak picture, it lacked intrigue or suspense. It made it hard to stay focussed and keep going. This book is depressing to read, especially at this time, where isolation is high and this survival state is a more real possibility. So I had a hard time wanting to continue reading.

      But it was really well written. It was well done and I thought it felt like a real account of a true story. I could believe this to be true. It was super interesting and props to the author, it was really well written and very visceral.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant. Profound. Native perspectives matter. I loved it. It was calming and also thought evoking.
    • 5/5
      Finished it in two days. Will stay with me. Easy listen with a powerful build. Haunting story of the history of colonization and its consequences. Told with the coming of long predicted disaster of the disregard for land and indigenous stewardship. But ultimately the resilience found in returning to ways not dependent on the infrastructure colonization. The weaving of Anishinaabe language and stories into a stark vision of the future and metaphor of the past history of colonization was masterful.
    • 4/5
      The insight into tribal life and the environment is just beautiful. Interesting characters and plot!
    • 4/5
      The narrator was fantastic. This novel is very well written. Chilling and unnerving in its realism. Community and survival in an isolated Native American reservation; modern civilization has crashed to a halt due to a crippling loss of infrastructure and electricity. As the people fight for their survival a malevolent stranger works his way into the community. While the pacing is slow, it's necessary to properly tell the story, the stakes get higher and higher as you go. The story is filled with references to the Native peoples culture and way of life but executed in a way that is very organic within the story.
    • 4/5
      A slow burn character driven story about Native Americans facing the end of the world.
    • 5/5
      Good dystopian story. Highlights the wisdom of indigenous people and how they are able to survive and flourish.
    • 5/5
      This is well outside my usual choice of story, but accidently i started listening when my young daughter selected it while I was out of the room and was intently listening, deciding not to upset her by choosing something else I would let it play, before long I was hooked, even though my daughter was not. I put is aside for a day and listened something more appropriate for her, and came back to it a day or so late. Once you get in to it this remarkable story, you have no choice to listen, it is a page turner.
    • 4/5
      This is definitely a slow-burn story though I don't say that negatively. No, it's important to know that this is a good thing as it allows the reader to feel the tension growing along with the characters as the situation becomes more dire. It took twists that I wasn't expecting at times and the sorrow the community felt was palpable. I'm definitely interested to read more works by this author as the setting and story told was one not previously told. I'll probably write a more detailed review later, but this will do for now.
    • 1/5
      I was still waiting for the story to start and the characters to do some developing and then the book ended.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      I liked the story and was VERY unhappy when it quit at chapter 26 and I was unable to hear the end!!! That is clearly a Problem with Scribd, not with the book or the author.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Such a great promise, and such a great start, but it really feels like an unfinished outline.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      It didn’t manage to grip me, too much malevolence not enough warmth. It might have been the narrator that ruined it for me, the pauses in the wrong places were disturbing, although I can appreciate that it was a man who spoke the native language.
      I’m sure other people will like it, the storyline is interesting but lacks depth according to my preference.
    • 4/5
      I mean it was fine. The narration is great, and it’s an interesting story, but the ending felt a little rushed and anticlimactic to me. Glad I read it, but probably won’t get a re-read from me.
    • 4/5
      This post-apocalyptic story is set in a small Anishinaabe community in a far north Canadian community. Evan Whitesky, 24, has a family of four, and had been trying to keep alive his Ojibwe culture, which had always been marked by a communitarian spirit.Suddenly, all that changes when television, phone, and internet services all go down, with the community totally cut off from the rest of the world, including from deliveries of food and oil. After two of their young community members returned from college on stolen snowmobiles, bearing tales of outages, hunger, and violence in the city, fear ran rampant. It became difficult to maintain order, all the more so when some outsiders arrived seeking refuge.Most of the story takes place during the first long winter during this apocalypse, when blizzards made travel almost impossible, and the residents couldn’t even bury the increasing numbers of dead, mostly lost to sickness, violence, freezing to death, or by suicide. Readers see how various members of the tribe respond to the ongoing crisis, reactions determined by either fear and greed on the one hand, or by the persistent adherence to Anishinaabe values on the other. It is unclear, however, who will survive and who will not.An Epilogue takes place two years after the story began.Evaluation: Post-apocalyptic stories have a certain bleak sameness about them, but this one poses the interesting question of how people with life-long communitarian values could make a difference, at least for a while. The fact that native peoples have always had to find a way to endure even as whites took away their land and resources is another factor that plays into the survival equation. Rice injects a number of Anishinaabe words and information about cultural practices into the story, similar to what one finds in the William Kent Krueger crime series featuring Cork O’Connor, the part-Irish, part-Anishinaabe Indian ex-sheriff of the small town of Aurora, Minnesota. It is a culture that, at least as portrayed by these two authors, has much to offer to non-natives open to other ways of interacting with their environments.Note: This book received the 2019 John W. Campbell Memorial Award Nominee for Best Science Fiction Novel.
    • 5/5
      Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice is a powerful post-apocalyptic story set in a small northern Anishinaabe community. When an unnamed something causes the world to go dark, this small Indian community is cut-off from the rest of the world. The people must learn to live without electricity, phones and delivery of goods and food from the south. The winter is long and harsh and many people are not prepared to survive but the community tries to keep everyone supplied with food and heat as best as they can. Main character, Evan Whitesky and his mate Nicole have two children, they are living on the reservation and are relearning their traditional ways of living. When a white man arrives seeking refuge, Evan and the community allow him to stay even though they have doubts as to his willingness to fit in. As the winter progresses power struggles arise and hostility and slow burning tensions built to a stunning climax.I was spell-bound by Moon of the Crusted Snow. The author’s writing drew me into the story and his descriptions of nature and weather set the stage for this interesting dystopian tale. A story of survival that was unsettling yet hopeful, Rice is a born storyteller and I look forward to reading more from this author.
    • 4/5
      An interesting story of a northern Ontario reservation that struggles to survive post apocalypse. The book slowly uncovers the discovery of the situation and then how outsiders to their community have different plans for survival. I found the book good but also really creepy.
    • 3/5
      When the apocalypse hits, a small Anishinaabe community doesn’t notice at first, because losing power and cellphone service isn’t that uncommon. But as the days stretch out, it becomes increasingly clear that something has gone very wrong outside. And then the white refugees start to turn up. A low-key apocalypse, where the whole point is that the world has ended a number of times, and yet some people survive.
    • 5/5
      Alas, given variances in subjective perspectives there are more than a few that may find this eloquently simple story slow and dull. In my view though, it's not intended to be distracting entertainment, but rather an interesting story encapsulating contrasting cultural proclivities. Something that more need see the value in if we truly care about our children's futures.

      I don't see modern civilization crashing overnight as it does in the beginning of this story, but such was necessary in getting on with the intended story. To the story's credit it does, succinctly within context, relate how a majority of humans have been on a destructive path far too long.

      Foregoing details that could give a false impression, I will say it's a hopeful story if enough see the value inherent in its telling.

      “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” ~ Albert Einstein
    • 5/5
      A slow-burner where suspense builds up to a shocking climax. Haunting, telling the tale of a modern First Nation tribe in northern Ontario, struggling to survive without the trapping of modern life: infrastructure and all that goes with it; food shortage; a hard, unforgiving winter with blizzard conditions and cold. I appreciated what these people went through, especially with outsiders--white people--coming onto the reservation to escape the same situation down south, and with their leader's brutality, forcing themselves upon this community. Writing was spare and characterizations full-blooded. I got a sense of some of the Ojibwa customs. A small thing, but I wish when native words were used [most meanings of which you could figure out by context] if the words in the spoken language are accented, accent marks had been used to show syllable stress. The title to me meant the time of year when the story took place.Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Evan Whitesky is out hunting moose when the cell phones stop working. Soon after, the reservation loses electricity, sat phones, and all other contact with the outside world. Then the blizzards begin.I enjoyed becoming immersed in this dystopian novel and quickly sped through it in a day. The author is from Wasauksing First Nation, and the novel is set on an Anishinaabe reservation. Without being heavy-handed, some history of the tribe is included as well as native words and customs. It made for a very interesting read.
    • 5/5
      I'm not going to give anything away about what happens in this novel. It's a fantastic book, doing much of what Leave the World Behind does, only in a different way and more effectively. Evan lives with his wife and two children in an Anishinaabe community in northern Ontario. One morning in late autumn, they wake to find themselves without electricity and service for their cell phones or internet. This isn't unusual in a neglected and underpopulated part of the country, but it soon appears as though the interruption might last longer than a few days. This is a short novel, without a wasted word or unnecessary scene. Rice creates a sense of rising tension that was highly effective and by centering the story not on the community leaders, but on the guy who drives the snowplow, there's also a sense of being in the middle of things. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      A recent review by nickelini of this book made me want to pick it up. I've committed to reading some books by Native Americans this year and this is written by a First Nations member. It has great detail about this Anishinaabe community trying to save some of their traditions and get back to their roots. It actually tied in surprisingly well to a nonfiction book I'm reading called [Braiding Sweetgrass]. A lot of Native American traditions especially regarding respect for the land are described in both. This novel is a little hard to describe, but it's basically an apocalyptic suspense/thriller. The community is in northern Ontario and suddenly, as winter is beginning, they lose power and cell service. At first they believe it is just a fluke and will be repaired. But then they learn that it is not just their community that has lost power. They need to decide how, together or apart, they will survive the winter. I really liked this. The setting is great, both in terms of the location and the cultural setting. I will say that it wasn't quite as "thrilling" to me as it was set up to be. I wasn't really surprised by any of it and I thought something even more dramatic would happen than what actually did happen. But, overall I'd still recommend it.
    • 4/5
      Moon of the Crusted Snow, authored by Waubgeshig Rice, popped on my radar by way of the Bookriot article titled: Welcome To Indigenous Horror: 4 Indigenous Books To Try, written by Amanda Diehl. This was the only title on this list I have been able to get my hands on so far (borrowed from my library) but I remain hopeful, and diligent in my searching. I also would like to read the other works by this author. My honest review is below, freely given.I rated this novel 4.5 stars.The way the world ends could be endlessly written about, ranging from the fantastical to the horrific, mired in scientific explanation or religious signs; presented with hopeful to despondent emotion. I had not yet read a story of the modern world ending from the viewpoint of of a people already so isolated due to marginalization and separation onto reservations, but I was looking forward to it. If your communication with everyone off the rez (reservation) is spotty at best during the colder weather, then when it happens with finality, you wouldn’t know right away; that gets under my skin, creeps me out. I know they were already preparing, stocking up for winter, but they still thought everything was a-okay with the people that stock their diesel, restock their grocer’s store. There was a whole safety net they thought was under them that had been ripped away. How they dealt with everything that followed, as a small community, fascinated me. These were not random survivors thrown together hashing out their differences, fighting bitterness over perceived slights; these were family, lifetime friends, whose dedication to pulling their weight for the community (or not) was bare for all to see, more complicated to deal with, I’m sure. And having to decide what to do with outsiders asking for shelter, and all the good and bad that can come from that, I thought was another strong pull on the tension that had been building steadily from the first chapter. If I ever get to the point where listening to audio books are possible for me (not while the kids have school from home!), I would love to hear the Anishinaabe written within the book spoken. There are English words I’ve only read that I know I butcher trying to say; I can only imagine at this point how lovely the words shared with us in this novel really sound.