Salvation City: A Novel
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Product Description
From the critically acclaimed leader of The Last of Her Kind comes a breakout novel that imagines the aftermath of endemic flu, as seen through the eyes of a thirteen-year-ancient boy who is uncertain of his destiny.
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His parents take him from Chicago to live in a tiny Indiana college town when the flu endemic strikes leaving Cole Vining an orphan. Much of the world’s population dies from this horrific disease.
Youngsters like Cole become the rapture children sent to cold orphanages to live. Pastor Wyatt takes Cole and additional children with him to Salvation City, a clogged Christian monastery. There he is to be indoctrinated in the way of the religious vehemence of the survivors starting with Wyatt and his wife Tracy. Having been raised by secular liberals before the flu killed his parents; Cole struggles to fit in the new world order.
This is a strong young adult post-apocalyptic thriller starring a fascinating protagonist who from the start has issues with his new world though grateful he has been lifted out of the chaos; for instance the use of euphemisms with the Pastor adage passed and his late mom adage died. The tale line focuses on Cole who has small time to grieve his loss as he is caught up in the survivor scenario including guilt and hypocrisy while being yanked in the opposite direction from his parental nurturing. Readers of all ages, but especially teens will appreciate this thought provoking look at a utopian Eden made in the image of Pastor Wyatt.
Harriet Klausner
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Young Cole has learned more in his 13 years of life than most people could handle. He has veteran loss of home, family tree, health, and memory, only to have finally come to admit like, life, girls and most of all “home.” This book of one man’s philosophy versus another’s religion reveals the potential of right happiness in the face of incomprehensible misfortune. I couldn’t place it down, needing to know `what happens next?’ Yet realizing that no one ever has that answer. Nor should they. This is wonderfully written, the characters come alive and the possibilities are endless.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
There is something very compelling about Sigrid Nunez’s newest novel, Salvation City; I know there is, but I can’t reasonably place my finger on why it’s so compelling. I do know that you will keep turning the pages. The protagonist is a young boy, Cole Vining, and the action covers his life mostly between the ages of 12 and about 15. He is a very likeable kid, an innocent in many ways, with some strong echoes of Holden Caulfield, struggling with his own budding sexuality and also trying to figure out, under extremely trying and traumatic circumstances, what life is really all about and how he should live his. The tale is set in the near future, in a kind of post-apocalyptic Midwest following a world-wide flu endemic, which has rumor has it that wiped out enormous numbers of people, perhaps millions. Cole’s parents were among the dead and he had been seriously ill himself, but managed to survive.
I call it the “near-future” because there are references to things that were in the news just in the past few years – the “subway superman” tale, as well as the “miracle on the Hudson” plane landing by Captain Sully. There are refences in the tale to the “elbow bump” adopted in lieu of a handshake – an attempt to prevent the spread of germs and flu. Which sounds a lot like the way schoolkids were taught to cough or sneeze into their bent elbow, rather than into their hands, during the H1N1 flu scares of the past couple years. And since I was reading this book during the start of flu season its theme and setting seemed even more ominous.
The endemic has passed by the time the tale opens, but the widespread effects of it have yet to be resolved. Social and civic services have been seriously disrupted, thousands of children have been left orphaned, in some cases roaming the streets, thieving and living by their wits, regularly under the control of an opportunistic adult – in additional words, “Dickensian” conditions prevail, both in public and also in the many orphanages that have been quickly set up. Lawlessness and crime are rampant, particularly in the larger cities, like Chicago, where Cole and his parents had lived not long before the endemic.
Cole, who spent some time in hospitals and also in the “Here Be Hope” orphanage, is finally taken into the childless southern Indiana home of Pastor Wyatt and his wife Tracy, fundamentalist bible-thumpers, who judge in “the Rapture,” and that the end of the world is near. Wyatt, or PW, as Cole learns to call him, is a curiously compassionate and charismatic mixture of a man, who has gone through some hard times himself. Indeed, having survived the endemic, he is later stricken with a particularly painful case of shingles, which tests his faith. But, like Job, he continues to judge, and tries his best to be a excellent surrogate father and a Christian example to Cole, whose real parents were atheists and intellectuals (his mother was Jewish).
It would have been simple, I suppose, for the leader to described the fundamentalists of the Salvation City Church congregation as ignorant and tiny-minded, but Nunez does not do that. As a replacement for, Wyatt and Tracy and additional members of the sect come across as fully realized and complex characters, simple folks who seem to be doing the best they can with the hands they’ve been dealt.
Nunez makes passing reference to the classic sci-fi film, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and how a teacher had once told Cole how the film was proof that “you didn’t need to show a lot of violence to make a fantastic scary movie.” Well I remember that film too and how it gave me nightmares after seeing it as a kid. Salvation City is like that ancient movie. There is no real overt violence here – the sickness and death, the dread, terror and cruelty all take place “off screen” or “off stage” as it were, like the ancient Greek tragedies. Even so, I kept thinking of additional post-apocalypic books I’d read years ago, works like H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds or Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon. And the chilling portrayal of how grossly unprepared the U.S. government was for such a endemic is frightening enough in itself.
Cole Vining is, as I said earlier, a excellent kid, a name you’ll root for. In the end, you know he will figure things out. He will, somehow, make right choices. There is a feeling of hope, finally, in the last pages, as Cole contemplates his future, having chose he must stay in school, get a excellent education. And “when he thought about what lay yet to be, all the adventures and discoveries waiting for him, he felt full to the brim with excitement.”
Another reviewer likened Cole to a latter-day Huck Finn. Maybe he’s right. Because by the tale’s end, Cole is poised, thinking about “lighting out” on his own soon, but perhaps in this case, it will be “from” rather than “to” the territory that is the outside world. Salvation City has served its purpose. Cole has been saved. Now it’s up to him to make a life.
This is a very thought-provoking read. It will stay with you for a long time. – Tim Bazzett, leader of BOOKLOVER
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Salvation City is the most unassuming post-apocalyptic tale I’ve ever read. After a flu endemic devastates the near-future, a young orphaned boy named Cole is taken in by a Christian fundamentalist preacher and his wife. So Cole has to re-adjust from a secular urban lifestyle to a religious rural one, in addition to growing pains and the difficulty of having lost his parents.
Tiny town life in Indiana was described well, and well-drawn characters are one of the book’s strong suits. I did, but, miss the more predictable dystopian/post-apocalyptic details of the genre – the endemic only provides a fragile background for the tale, whereas I had expected such a severe experience to, more accurately, drastically alter life and even the way people thought about their society for years afterward. So that aspect of the book felt flat to me. But the coming of age tale, the nuanced personalities and relationships of Cole’s family tree and nearly-family tree, is told thoughtfully and sympathetically.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
I read “Salvation City” in a single afternoon. I was painstakingly engrossed in the tale,, the characters, the ides and the leader’s perfectly direct prose. I have read a number of “post-apocalyptic” novels lately and “Salvation City” up there with the best of them (notably, Margaret Atwood’s “The Year of The Flood”), but it is reasonably different from most. The “apocalypse” in “Salvation City” is simpler and more straightforward, and life in the aftermath is much less different than in additional novels from the pre-event reality. In fact, the flu endemic in “Salvation City,” while setting the stage for the novel, really was not altogether necessary; it just provided a distinctive framework in which to present a contemporary coming-of-age novel.
Cole Vining was born to atheists (one of whom was formerly Jewish) is orphaned by a flu endemic and is fostered, during his pubescence, by an evangelical preacher and his cancer-surivivor wife. As Cole grows into adulthood, he deals with issues of like and loss, faith and doubt, and egocentricity and selflessness. The leader is remarkably even-handed in presenting the “grist” for Cole’s “mill” and, while many of the characters are, she is never judgmental. Rather, she leaves Cole to make his own choices, and the reader to respect all the possibilities Cole considers in building persons choices.
In the end, the reader is fully in like with each of the characters, long-suffering all of their wonderful qualities, as well as their significant, but very human, flaws. I was stirred deeply. As a result, I will be purchasing and reading additional works by Ms. Nunez before long.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5