As of 2008 James Howard Kunstler is the author of nine novels and three nonfiction books, The Geography of Nowhere, Home from Nowhere, and The Long Emergency. This novel is far from a typical post-apocalyptic novel. It was a highly rated book by my wife’s Book Club last year.

The back cover’s brief summary says “The electricity has flickered out. The automobile age is over. In Union Grove, a little town in upstate New York, life is hard and close to the bone. James Howard Kunstler, celebrated social critic and author of the best-selling The Long Emergency, takes an imaginative leap into the future with World Made by Hand. This is the story of Robert Earle and his fellow townspeople, and what happens one summer in a country that has changed profoundly. A powerful tale of love, loss, violence, and desperation, World Made by Hand is also lyrical and tender, a surprising story of a new America struggling to be born.” Following are three of the many good, revealing quotes by reviewers I’ve chosen to providea bit more detail than does the back cover.

By the Baltimore City Paper: “High gas prices, the war in Iraq, the tremulous stock market: complain all you want, but these troubling times are doing their part to fuel post-apocalyptic literature. Unlike the bleakness of style and subject in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, James Howard Kunstler’s World Made by Hand is an end-of-days novel that is more a pleasure than a burden to read; it frightens without becoming ridiculously nightmarish, it cautions without being too judgmental, and it offers glimmers of hope we don’t have to read between the lines to comprehend.”

By Alan Cheuse of the Chicago Tribune: ”In his latest book, Kunstler segues from his analysis of the possible effects of a decline in oil production on modern society to a full-blown, and artfully carried out, semidystopic dramatization of what small-town American life might be like in the wake of major terrorist bombings and industrial decline on U.S. soil. . . But in the end, the beauty of Kunstler’s brilliant cautionary fiction, aside from the charming narrative with its many convincing details of life after apocalypse, is that most readers will admit that Earle’s world, the world made by hand, after all the terror bombs and bad actors are deal with, sounds at least as unpredictably pleasing as our own.”

By O, The Oprah Magazine: “What’s after Armageddon? No government, no laws, no infrastructure, no oil, no industry . . . and sometimes a sense of relief. In Kunstler’s richly imagined World Made by Hand, the bone-weary denizens of Union Grove (with its echo of Our Town’s Grovers Corners) cope with everything from mercenary thugs to religious extremists, yet manage to plant a few seeds of human decency that bear fruit.”

Next I fill in some blanks in the above reviews by providing some more details. First, to my initial disappointment, the characters in this novel seldom mention the bombings but only sometimes refer in passing to “after DC” or “after LA” or “after NYC” – this would be appropriate sine their lives are quite busy trying to survive. There are many complaints about the unusual heat from townsfolk or from southerners who move to northern New York to escape the heat and drought of the South. Living in town provides them some protection against the “mercenary thugs” – a gang that collect numerous items from the many remote abandoned homes (many of which were not abandoned but were ‘depopulated’ by the gang) to sell to the Union Grove townsfolk. The main character, Robert Earle, is a carpenter who often needs to buy supplies, such as nails, from the gang. He witnesses the murder of a fellow visitor by a gang member, but the townsfolk are reluctant to confront the well-armed gang.

A new element to join Union Grove is the New Faith Brotherhood, a large group of southern religious families who buy and repair the abandoned decrepit high school. There are two major incidents where several well-chosen and trained young men from the New Faith Brotherhood take action against the local gang and also against a gang downriver in Albany. Their action is not reform or conversion, but sudden and deadly surprise attacks to eliminate “those bad folks.” This reminds me of tales of the old west (and of the lynching of “bad” black men down South). Such violent vigilante judgment was accepted, if not actually liked, by the original Union Grove townsfolk – but when there is no longer any law, “might makes right” becomes the rule and Union Grove becomes more secure with the New Faith Brotherhood in their midst. Their new world, made by hand, is and will continue to be hard work for the people of Union Grove, but there is hope indeed for their future.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and I give it my highest recommendation.