The Raven’s Gift by Don Rearden

There is a strangely impermeable membrane between the worlds of Canadian and US publishing. Even in such a Canada- cozy place as Alaska, it is surprisingly hard to locate books by Canadian publishers. Or so I’m going to claim as my excuse for not having previously read this exciting and beautiful first novel by an Alaskan author. Luckily for me, Penguin reissued it this year in the United States. Set in a disorientingly near- present moment in southwest Alaska, this novel is both a page- turning thriller and a grimly realistic portrayal of the challenges of life in a village community in the North. The parallel narratives take place sometime before and sometime after disease— or something— wipes out most inhabitants of the fictionalized village to which we’re introduced from the perspective of two married schoolteachers, John and Anna, the former originally from this community but raised in Anchorage by adoptive parents and now alienated culturally (though hungering for contact with his roots). The preapocalypse passages are grimly unsentimental; this is an honest portrait of the challenges facing well- intentioned teachers and other service workers who want to make a difference through their contributions to impoverished rural communities. John seems to be making a marginal difference in his own quest for roots as well as in his classroom, although any hint of a To Sir with Love ending is regularly undercut— or intercut— by the postapocalypse passages (in which there is no sign of Anna).

Those postapocalypse segments, which gradually take over the book as the backstory is filled in, will remind many readers of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. But please consider that comparison to be high praise for Rearden’s novel, which has some of the same stylistic polish as well as the grim setting and plot. Moreover The Raven’s Gift provides certain satisfactions that McCarthy wasn’t interested in indulging. For one thing we do learn some details about the cause of the apocalypse, and they are historically situated such that we are motivated to look both backward and forward, in horror and in dread. For another thing— well, wait, no spoilers. (I said it was a page turner.) The plot is satisfyingly played out across the vivid backdrop of a place that is carefully and accurately described, and Alaskan clichés are deftly navigated. Like Seth Kantner, Don Rearden grew up in the region about which he writes, and The Raven’s Gift depicts rural Alaska like no other novel has since Ordinary Wolves. (Has it already been almost a decade since that novel came out?) There is a great deal of successful genre fiction set in Alaska these days, by such locals as John Straley, Sue Henry, and Dana Stabenow, and sometimes, as in the best work by Straley, such fiction transcends genre. But The Raven’s Gift should not be mistaken for a mere thriller or horror story— it’s too real, both too close to home and too far from anywhere else.