A book review: "THE EVENT: At Dawn's Early Light"

 

THE EVENT: At Dawn’s Early Light

A novel by Christopher Nyerges

[www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com]

Nearly 20 years ago I had a series of memorable dreams that seemed so real that I wrote down all the details when I woke up.  This was a time in my life when I was worrying about everything, and I would often go to sleep hoping for a vision, or an answer.

Pictures came in my dreams, and little by little, I pieced the pictures together. I dutifully wrote down he details every morning, and eventually, I thought to myself, Hey, this might make a good story!  I slowly wrote a fictitious novel based on these dreams which I now call The Event.

Though most of the dreams had to do with my personal life, the larger picture that I began to write about took on a life of its own. 

THE EVENT

In the novel, The Event, “something” happens one day.  No one ever finds out what it was.  Was it a comet that hit the earth?  Was it plasma ejected from the sun?  No one knows, but it killed off nearly everyone, unless they happened to be underground and stayed there for about three days.

The story that emerges is of a dark world, through the eyes of  the main character who I call Rick. Rick survived because he stayed with his co-worker Tim,  in Tim’s family cellar.  Finally, Rick emerges and explores the world that now exists.

The story takes place in Southern California, from the Pasadena area, into Eagle Rock, and into Highland Park.  Rick sees abandoned vehicles and dead bodies everywhere, and he cautiously  seeks out the survivors.

In the Pasadena/ Altadena area, he finds that his wife survived.  They had not been living together and Rick finds her in a hidden shelter that she created deep in her backyard.  She knows the few neighbors who survived, and tells Rick that trucks came through the area in the days after the event, telling survivors that they had to get into the trucks and evacuate the area.  Dolores just hid, and made her shelter and cooked soup, which she served to any friendly visitors.

Rick makes his way on foot through the Rose Bowl area, and through the Annandale Golf Course where he finds some drunken survivors who think Rick is coming to help them.  Rick had been a famous physicist from Caltech, though now youthfully retired, and his picture was on the wall of the golf course office along with other famous physicists.  The drunken survivors thus believed that Rick was there to provide some answers, though Rick was just passing through.

On his way to his old home and urban farm in Highland Park, which is northeast Los Angeles, he encounters homeless camps still surviving, he gets shot at, and he meets Jane, who was a former member of the National Guard. Together, they make their way into Rick’s destination, the old Fuller Farm, which had been a place to garden and farm in the city and learn about permaculture and self-reliant living.

Most of the folks at the Fuller Farm survived, though barely.

The story tracks a few other groups of individuals as well, all who end up at the Fuller Farm, and who find ways to work together now that there is no functioning larger society.  The Event meant that suddenly there were no banks, no electricity, no functioning grocery or hardware stores.  Indeed, there was nothing to spend money on, even if  you had any.   Though water is not an immediate problem, everyone knows that most of the water to Los Angeles came from over 300 miles away, and that they needed to plan for water.

The surviving society is also full of opportunists who want to control areas, and who are ready to fight and kill to take what they need.  The story describes the gun fights and assaults that were the inevitable result of the battles started by those who wanted to forcefully acquire something they wanted or needed..  It’s not a pretty picture, but the survivors of the developing communities learn to set up perimeter barriers, and alarms, though they continue to have random and unexpected gunfights.

Of course, The Event is a work of fiction, and I do not possess a crystal ball as to what the future portends.   This is the exploration of one scenario, and the mechanics for how a small group of people in L.A. County might survive under such adverse conditions. 

Six months after the event, it is apparent that whatever happened was very widespread and that things would not be going back to “normal” anytime soon.  The two groups which this novel tracks,  begin to assert their political identity and they take charge of their little emerging and growing communities.  There are lots of twists and turns and setback, while there is still hope.  Along the way, I was able to insert little hints about the things that people might need, such as a silcock key for accessing water, or the “vinegar of four thieves” for washing wounds.

I enjoyed the process of creating this as a movie in my mind and then writing what I was “seeing.”  I hope that you enjoy it too, and find it both entertaining and educational.

The Event is available from Amazon.com as an e-book or hard copy book.  It is 283 pages long.