J. A. Chernov’s first novel is a thriller must read.
I don’t read very many thrillers, because most of them pay little attention to characterization. Terrorizing is the chief aim. J. A. Cherov’s debut novel, Cascadia’s Curse, proved an exception. She is a technical and non-fiction writer by profession and this skill shows in the depth of her research, but this first attempt shows she is clearly also a novelist.
Charnov’s thriller brings a fiction author’s skill to a natural disaster that is not fantasy—the cataclysmic disruption of the Cascadia fault that runs the length of the Pacific coast from Vancouver Island to Northern California. In a world beset by natural disasters of historic proportions, the thoroughly researched events–tsunamis, earthquakes, and fires—that confront the characters of this story, have the impact, especially for readers of the northwest, of truly possible futures.
As warning sirens go off, we hear many voices react—a pair of elderly sisters, a young wife alone and weakened by surgery, couples with young children, a young man caught traveling through—and the story of their coping (or lack thereof) drives the book. Though the disaster strikes very early in the book, Charnov manages to create three dimensional characters the reader identifies with before they are inundated by the crisis, and their actions and reactions break through our expectations over and over but remain credible. Neither age nor gender nor social class predict their character when faced with death or the death of others.
The novel is a gripping read. It is the work of an author thoroughly at home in the woods of the Oregon coast, and her details bring it alive for the reader—we become part the earth, rocks and trees that come alive and the events themselves have the credibility of thorough research, as the acknowledged sources attest. Both of those qualities add to our absorption in the fate of the characters.
As with any multi-voiced book, it’s a bit of a challenge to keep the characters straight in the beginning, but well worth the effort. A deeply absorbing—and disturbing—thriller must read.
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