The Alliance

Summary (from the publisher): When Leora Ebersole sees the small plane crash in her Old Order Mennonite community, she has no idea it’s a foreshadowing of things to come. Once the young pilot, Moses Hughes, regains consciousness, they realize his instruments were destroyed by the same power outage that killed the electricity at the community store, where Englischers are stranded with dead cell phones and cars that won’t start.

Moses offers a sobering theory, but no one can know how drastically life is about to change. With the only self-sustaining food supply in the region, the Pacifist community is forced to forge an alliance with the handful of stranded Englischers in an effort to protect not only the food but their very lives.

In the weeks that follow, Leora, Moses, and the community will be tested as never before, requiring them to make decisions they never thought possible. Whom will they help and whom will they turn away? When the community receives news of a new threat, everyone must decide how far they’re willing to go to protect their beliefs and way of life.

 

Review: Leora Ebersole is a young nineteen-year-old woman responsible for her younger brother, mentally challenged younger sister, and elderly grandmother in the wake of her father's abandonment and her mother's death. Despite her responsibilities, Leora has lived a sheltered and isolated existence in her Old Order Mennonite community located near the Canadian border. However, that all changes the day a small plane crashes in her community. The young pilot, Moses Hughes, offers a devastating explanation for what has occurred and how the world will change. In the wake of the downfall of electricity and technology, the pacifist community must make hard decisions about how they will approach this calamity and what they're willing to do to protect their families and avoid starvation. This new order tests Leora's faith while at the same time she feels a growing attraction to Moses.

 

Petersheim should be commended on her unique approach to the popular apocalyptic fiction fad, which originally drew me to this book. In particular, approaching the crisis from the perspective of a pacifist community, but one that has the skills to survive without modern technology, was an interesting approach. Furthermore, I appreciated the faith-based view of this catastrophe, with Leora and her community questioning not only their survival but the implication on their spiritual faith.

 

However, this is where my appreciation for this novel ended. The writing and characterization was shallow and unpersuasive and was so surface level that there was little distinction between any of the characters. In particular, other than her sister who can't speak, I had little sense of any of Leora's family members by the end of this book. Mennonite and Englischer characters read the same, when their motivations and speech should have been very different. For that matter, the author seems to have done little research on Old Order Mennonite culture, as I found it highly unlikely from the beginning that the community would have heeded Moses' advice to the point that they would alter their lifestyle. Mennonites have maintained their beliefs since the 1600s and it would take more than the word of one pilot to change their course.

 

Furthermore, I find it doubtful that Leora would have quickly thrown away her pacifist beliefs and spent so much time alone with Moses, despite being raised in a very isolated and strict religious sect. Leora expresses concerns that contradict her upbringing, such as her outrage over not having a voice in decision making: "I cannot take part because I'm a woman who can only have a voice through her father and husband when I have neither to my name." Leora's first person narrative doesn't jive with someone raised in an isolated community. For example, she describes her brother saying he is "all long bones and joints, like an artist's quick sketch of a body in motion." Most Old Order Mennonites have their own schools so Leora would hardly be uneducated, yet I doubt her schooling would include an overview of what an artist's "quick sketch of a body" would look like. On another note, I found the reason behind Leora's father's abandonment completely, absurdly implausible, although I won't reveal it to spoil anything for other readers. Although Leora repeatedly states that she is motivated by guilt for her sister's condition and a deep feeling of responsibility towards keeping her family safe, her actions belie these words throughout.

 

Despite the quick breakdown of society, which was predicted early on by Moses, little happens in this book. Most of the novel is spent worrying about what to do, making fruitless forays for supplies, and arguing amongst themselves. A significant time is devoted to the love triangle between Moses, Leora, and Jabil, which seems silly in light of the fact that they all question how long they will survive. When Leora and Moses spot a "gang" headed their way, they still don't flee but all have a Thanksgiving-like feast and then suddenly realize too late that they need to get the women and children out of the community, which is soon under attack. In short, the characters make dumb decisions that had me rolling my eyes instead of buying in to the fictional reality that they are trying to survive in a failing world. As I was reading, I couldn't help but think how members of the Old Order Mennonite community would feel about how they are portrayed in this book and imagine they would feel insulted to see themselves depicted as fickle characters who lack deep convictions or faith in times of crisis - a portrayal vastly different from the hundreds of years of steadfast beliefs they have displayed in reality.

 

Stars: 2