Rice’s apocalyptic novel, set on an Ashinaabe reservation “up North” is a sad but dignified slow realization of the reordering of community in the face of the unthinkable. He follows the young family of Evan and Nicole Whitesky, a couple who have loved each other almost since kindergarten, and now have two small children to raise. Over the course of several days, as Evan puts aside the last of the winter stores for his extended family, the adults’ cell phone stop working, then the satellite TV, then the electricity and running water give out. No one is coming from the south to replenish the food in the reservation grocery. The community stumbles through the early days, finding ways to care for all its members and resisting the chaos and violence of the citified south that would pit them against one another. Not everyone is heroic—tribal leader Terry fails to make decisions and some of the young men succumb to alcohol or suicide—but the strength and determination gained through past apocalypses pushes them forward. Village elder Auntie Aileen reminds them that whites had forced them from their homeland and tried to strip their children of their culture in residential schools, and still the Ashinaabe persisted. A compelling look at a way of life.