Resurrection Day, by Brendan DuBois, is an alternative history novel by a mystery author. Maybe that shouldn’t matter but I get a different feel from it than, say, something by Turtledove or Stirling. Good enough, until the ending, but a thriller and not alterna-SF.
Alternative history stories always posit some known historical event and change it, then play out the consequences of that change; the classic example is Turtledove’s How Few Remain. In that story a messenger gets through to General Lee, who died before delivering his message in reality, allowing Lee to win the Battle of Antietem in 1862 preserving the Confederacy’s independence. The novel takes place 20 years later, when the two Americas are about to face off again.
Resurrection Day is set in 1972, ten years after the Cuban Missile Crisis spun out of control and both sides launched nukes: the Soviets got the worst of it but America lost big too, with DC, New York City, San Diego, and south Florida melted by nukes. Times are still really hard for Americans, with shortages of many necessities and continuing martial law, and few of the characters see any end to the misery.
Carl Landry is the protagonist, a former Kennedy idealist (he enlisted in the Army when JFK was elected, hoping to help realize that dream) who was a Special Forces advisor in South Vietnam when the bombs went off, continued in the Army in the early post-nuke years (the book never makes clear if his hitch was unilaterally extended or he re-upped), and then in 1968 returned to Boston and taking a job as a reporter with the Boston Globe. The job was a veteran’s benefit and many of the other reporters make clear their opinion that he’d have never been hired otherwise. Landry is assigned to cover the murder of an old vet and through this stumbles into a potential nightmare conspiracy that might lead to the end of the United States as an independent nation and, of course, often leads him into situations where he’s lucky to come out alive.
DuBois creates an interesting place in this novel, respecting that some cultural trends were probably so on course or inevitable that even a nuclear war couldn’t derail them and also detailing the realities of this life in an involving way. But I wouldn’t say that the plot itself is as compelling is it could be. Final judgment: I enjoyed reading this but I’m a big alternative history fan.
BillSaysThis 