The Wasteland Saga by Nick Cole

Published by Harper Voyager on October 15, 2013

The Wasteland Saga is a post-apocalyptic trilogy. The first and best of the novels, The Old Man and the Wasteland, follows a scavenger known as the Old Man as he takes a journey of redemption. Carrying a Hemingway novel and engaging in an internal monologue with the character Santiago from that novel, the Old Man is tested as he engages in conflicts with nature, with other people, and with himself. The second novel, The Savage Boy, focuses on a young man who is overcoming a disability while taking his own journey of self-discovery.

The third novel, The Road and the River, doesn't seem to have been separately published. It contains echoes of the first novel -- too many echoes, perhaps, as I was left with the feeling that I'd read this novel before. The Old Man is on a mission (rescuing people trapped in a Colorado bunker). He travels through the Wasteland. He talks to, and takes advice from, Santiago. He's introspective. He faces his fears. He perseveres. He learns to trust himself. Sacrifices are made. Good conquers evil.

The primary difference between the third novel and the first (apart from the fact that the Old Man is driving a tank instead of walking) is the addition of the Old Man's granddaughter as a traveling companion. She sees the world with the clarity of innocent eyes and helps focus the Old Man's conscience. Also joining the Old Man is the Savage Boy from the second novel. Like the granddaughter, the Savage Boy is an archetype of purity. That's good in the sense that he's admirable, but the complexity of his character that we saw in the second novel is missing here.

Perhaps due to the story's familiarity, the first half of The Road is a River lacks the intensity of the first two novels. The novel begins to build dramatic tension in the second half and it springs a surprise at the end of the Old Man's journey. The surprise isn't particularly convincing but it sets up a high-impact ending.

As was true of The Old Man and the Wasteland, the most memorable aspect of The Road is a River is the Old Man. Forty years after the bombs fell, he's forgetting the past. He can't remember what a feather duster is called, or the name of the canned stew he always made when he was a student. He wants to return to a past that no longer exists, not because he longs for its comforts (he can't imagine any home other than his little shack) but because he longs for its values. He wants life to have meaning. He wants people to have dignity. He wants people to care about each other, to behave unselfishly. He wants a better world for his granddaughter than the one into which she was born.

While not as emotionally affecting as the first novel, The Road is a River has some touching, resonant moments. Nick Cole has modeled his writing style in these novels after Hemingway, and emotional honesty was Hemingway's strength. The story could easily become maudlin, but honesty saves it. On the other hand, the "story of salvage" theme is reprised from the first novel so often that it becomes tiresome, and I could have lived without the epilog. Still, The Road is a River is a fitting end to a strong trilogy.

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The Savage Boy by Nick Cole

Published by Harper Voyager on February 26, 2013

The Savage Boy is set in the same post-apocalyptic future as The Old Man and the Wasteland. We learn a bit more about the cause of the apocalypse than the first novel reveals, but that's secondary to the very personal stories that occupy the heart of these novels.

Before he died from radiation poisoning, Staff Sergeant Presley told Boy to go west, to find the Army, to tell them there's nothing left. But it's been more than twenty years since Presley set out from Oakland to search for the remnants of a government in Washington, D.C. Boy carries Presley's map, the word "Gone" written next to many cities, others marked with "slavers" and "plague" and "white supremacists." San Francisco and Reno belong to the Chinese. As Boy makes his way west, he hears Presley's advising voice as if accompanied by a ghost. Presley was his teacher, his mentor, the closest thing he had to a father.

During his journey, Boy meets a gang led by Rock Star and an army of salvagers led by MacRaven. Both leaders want Boy to help them fight the Chinese. Boy's own agenda is to carry out Presley's mission, although he wonders whether anything could be left of the American Army.

Boy's past, his life before Presley, is cloudy. The journey he takes is largely a search for his own identity, a search for meaning. The war that destroyed the country is long over and Presley is gone. It's time for Boy to pick his own battles, to choose his own allies, to make a life that is his own. It might even be time for Boy to think for himself, to reject some of Presley's teachings.

Although The Savage Boy lacks the degree of pathos that makes The Old Man and the Wasteland so compelling, in part because it is easier to relate to the Old Man than to the mostly silent Boy, the story is not without emotion. The last third of the novel develops an odd love story that isn't entirely convincing (although after an apocalypse, an exchange of glances might be all it takes to fall in love). I did, however, like the theme: to find his identity, the disabled Boy needs to find someone who makes him complete. The last several chapters send the story in an entirely different direction as Boy's life again changes course. Although I didn't feel the same affection for Boy that I felt for the Old Man, the unpredictable plot consistently held my attention.

The Savage Boy is written in the same stark, straightforward, fast moving style that characterizes The Old Man and the Wasteland. Like the first novel, this one blends action and philosophy. I think the first novel delivers a stronger message, but The Savage Boy has enough depth to set it apart from most post-apocalyptic fiction. Although it works nicely as a stand-alone story, the ending ties the second novel in with the first. The last few paragraphs will therefore be more meaningful to readers who are familiar with the first novel.

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The Old Man and the Wasteland by Nick Cole

Published by Harper Voyager on January 22, 2013

Nick Cole published The Old Man and the Wasteland independently in 2011.  This appears to be one of the rare success stories of an author whose self-published work generated enough buzz to interest a major publisher.  It's easy to see why.

Inspired by Hemingway, The Old Man and the Wasteland is, according to Nick Cole's introduction to the revised (Harper Voyager) edition, an illustration of the lesson taught by The Old Man and the Sea: you can lose, but only if you give up will you be defeated. The Old Man and the Wasteland is short enough to qualify as a novella, and the revised edition reviewed here includes a preview of Cole's upcoming novel, The Savage Boy.

The old man in Cole's novel lives in a postapocalyptic wasteland in the American southwest. Like the other members of his village, he salvages whatever he can find that still has value. He was once a hero, having made great finds, a refrigerator among them, but later he became a symbol of bad luck, cursed for bringing a radioactive radio into the village. Now the old man hunts alone.

The novel addresses the three literary conflicts everyone learns about in high school English: man against man (a crazy hermit, a nomadic band of killers), man against nature (wolves, scorpions, monsoons), and most importantly, man against himself. As the old man searches for salvage, he strives to rekindle the person he once was, to find what he has lost within himself. At the same time, he knows that the key to survival is to "let go of what is gone," to set aside the pain of loss, to focus on the present, on salvage, not on "what had been or what was lost." The search for salvage is both a test of physical endurance and a test of character. Does the old man still have what it takes to find salvage that will help his village?

From Stephen King to Cormac McCarthy, post-apocalyptic tales have tended to be morality plays, allegorical explorations of good and evil. The protagonist journeys through a wasteland, encountering and rejecting evil in the quest for something good -- in this case, the quest for some part of the past worth salvaging. The falling bombs (and what could be more evil than nuclear bombs?) destroyed much of what was good, but the old man labors to restore the good, one scrap at a time. With determination, he may even be able to restore himself.

Cole wrote the novel in a style that is distinctly Hemingwayesque: plain and economical, deriving its power from the truth that the words conjure. One sentence -- "The line from where he had met the bee and the splotch of green was true and straight" -- aptly describes Cole's prose style: true and straight. The Old Man and the Wasteland tells an inspirational story that, in its own way, illustrates a life lesson just as effectively as the classic novel upon which it is based.

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