Starvation Ridge

Starvation Ridge is an important book

Starvation Ridge is an important book.

That is a strong statement, but I hold by it in spite of some flaws. The reason I say this is that I believe it is important to face what is a possible future for the planet. Nasty effects from climate change are not a matter of IF they will occur, but rather how much and when. This books takes an aggressive view of the time frame (takes place around 2048, with collapse beginning in the 2020s), which is pushing things but not beyond the realm of possibility. (I would like to remind people that the rate of glacier melt is surprising researchers, so why not the rate of other changes?)

But it is not the purpose of the review (or the novel) to debate the timing of climate change. If you prefer to move the story out another 50 years, the story remains. It is speculative fiction, but still plausible. It is a good, exciting, action packed story, with strong, well developed characters.

The story explores the social consequences of climate change that severely disrupts the ability of nations worldwide to feed their people. As society breaks down, there are further consequences that effect survivability. The author states:

"Hell" here is all of the above -- decline in fossil fuel extraction and processing, trouble with nuclear, especially the need for highly organized and expensive maintenance of fuel pools, evolved diseases, weather disruption leading to crop failure, solar flares, resource wars including EMP and cyber disruption, uncontrolled migrations, failed transport, especially of foodstuffs.
[private communication]

While I have some minor differences with Ms. Bear’s scenario, overall I agree with her assessment as to the future of American society given this situation. This, indeed, is what makes it an important work. Her view is of a brutal tribalism that sets in as people struggle to survive in a landscape that will no longer support anything approaching the original population.

Karen Rutledge has been brought up by her father in a hardened basement somewhere in western Oregon. She has never met another person, but has been educated extensively via books and magazines such as National Geographic. She has also grown up learning martial arts and how to construct things with limited resources. At the age of fourteen, they are discovered and attacked. Her father sacrifices himself to give her time to escape. Outside she finds a world that little resembles her magazines and stories. It is a brutal world in which society has totally collapsed and the main source of food for most of the survivors is other human beings.

Karen spends the next couple of years roaming the devastated wilderness trying to avoid these dangerous tribal groups. Eventually, she stumbles upon a community faming a small hidden valley in the western part of the Cascade Range, under a mountain formation called Starvation Ridge. There she is taken in, and slowly integrates into this very foreign little society.

All changes here, however, when the community is discovered by a roaming band of marauders led by the resourceful but malevolent man know as Wolf. The story describes the fateful encounter and later the invasion by a larger group from which Wolf split off. These conflicts are the backbone of the story.

The author has an ability to draw realistic characters and to describe well their motivations, actions and dialog. In particular, she somehow manages to breathe life into a plethora of minor characters living at the farm, a particularly difficult thing to do. Additionally, her knowledge of farming techniques in this area is deep and personal. (She has managed her own personal mini-farm for many years in the Oregon Coast Range, not far from the story.)

The weaknesses are that she sometimes gets bogged down in long conversations that may be more detailed than necessary. Additionally, her time frame of events is a little fuzzy, so it is difficult to get a clear idea of the history. This latter issue, however, in no way inhibits the action, of which there is plenty.

The importance of this work is that it shows the utter brutality not just of the people who prey on others, but of the time. Bear understands well the consequences of the disintegration of society. There are all the things that we take for granted, and upon which so much of our ability to survive in this world depends. Little things like antibiotics that prevent otherwise not too serious wounds from degenerating into gangrenous, life threatening infestations. Even without the marauders, the world is a hard. Ms. Bear does not shy away from the terrible implications of these hard facts.

And so people should read this book so that they can get a view of a world towards which we may very well be heading, perhaps later – perhaps sooner than we imagine.