The Witch of Hebron: A World Made by Hand Novel

by James Howard Kunstler

Overview

The dystopian epic of World Made by Hand continues in a novel hailed as “Larry McMurty’s Lonesome Dove, set in the dystopian world of The Road” (New York Journal of Books).

A new age has begun on Earth. Oil is no longer a resource. Some parts of America are nuclear wastelands. Civilization has devolved into a constant struggle for food, water, and shelter.

In the tiny hamlet of Union Grove, New York, the US government is little more than a rumor. Wars are being fought over dwindling resources and illness has a constant presence. Bandits roam the countryside, preying on the weak and a sinister cult threatens the town’s fragile stability. It is up to every citizen of Union Grove to decide what they are willing to fight for, kill for, and die for . . .

This is a tale of humanity at its shining best and brutal worst woven together in a “suspenseful, darkly amusing story with touches of the fantastic in the mode of Washington Irving” (Booklist).

“Kunstler’s postapocalyptic world is neither a merciless nightmare nor a starry-eyed return to some pastoral faux utopia; it’s a hard existence dotted with adventure, revenge, mysticism, and those same human emotions that existed before the power went out.” —Publishers Weekly

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802145444
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	09/27/2011
Series:	World Made by Hand Novels
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

James Howard Kunstler was born in New York City in 1948. He is the author of eleven novels and three nonfiction books, The Geography of Nowhere, Home From Nowhere, and The Long Emergency. He lives in upstate New York.

Editorial Reviews

Richly imagined . . . [The Witch of Hebron] reminded me of Larry McMurty’s Lonesome Dove, set in the dystopian world of The Road.”—New York Journal of Books

"[A] suspenseful, darkly amusing story with touches of the fantastic in the mode of Washington Irving."—Booklist

"Kunstler's post-apocalyptic world is neither a merciless nightmare nor a starry-eyed return to some pastoral faux utopia; it's a hard existence dotted with adventure, revenge, mysticism, and those same human emotions that existed before the power went out."—Publishers Weekly

“Vividly drawn . . . [The Witch of Hebron] plays to Kunstler’s strength, which is his understanding of municipal infrastructure, so he can analyze the importance of what has been taken from people, how they cope, and just what is necessary for them to survive.”—Steve Goddard’s History Wire (online)

From the Publisher

Doomsday survivors in upstate New York cope with a collapsed civilization in Kunstler's sequel to A World Made By Hand (2008).

The denizens of Union Grove have survived terrorist bombs, flu epidemics, race wars, freakish out-of-season hurricanes and an industrial meltdown that has spelled an end to electricity, cars, trains and cities. In the novel, a kind of post-post-apocalyptic tale, returning characters cope with more mundane threats: violent crime, crop disease, erectile dysfunction. Brother Jobe, dark-powered leader of the New Faith religious sect, is out to avenge the fatal drugging of his horse. The Rev. Loren Holder, whose impotence had him lending his wife to his best friend, Mayor Robert Earle, a software executive in "the old times," is drawn to Barbara Maglie, a madame with witchly powers of arousal. Then there are magistrate Stephen Bullock, who beheads three home intruders with a samurai sword and hangs ten other members of their gang; Billy Bones, a young "bandit" who goes on a raping and killing spree with troubled doctor's son Jasper Copeland in tow, and Perry Talisker, a hermit with Unabomber potential who, like most of the male characters, is prone to weeping. Kunstler, a high-profile blogger/social critic who sees sure disaster in U.S. oil policies, keeps his agenda under wraps. The novel is primarily an entertainment that keeps its pages turning with short chapters, snappy dialogue, sex scenes and pop-cultural references (Bob Dylan, Joyce Carol Oates, NASCAR). But following the end-of-life-as-we-know-it drama of the first book, much of what happens here feels anticlimactic, particularly since its retro-futurists think and act a lot more like stock characters from old TV Westerns than anything out of Cormac McCarthy.

A novel whose premise and stodgy storytelling may appeal more to young readers than adults.

Kirkus Reviews