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“Gardener of The World” puts the reader in the midst of the diverse ways individuals, families and communities might choose to react to a sudden, unthinkable natural disaster. Not being a typical post-apocalyptic scenario, it relies on the influence of strong women and resilient community traditions, portraying the spectrum of human emotions from hopelessness to humor.
Sean O'Brien is a retired engineer living off-grid with his family, near a small farm village in Michigan. Sean and his friend Tom, both amateur radio operators, know just enough about solar weather to recognize the profound scale and gravity of a power outage occurring one clear day in March. A solar, coronal mass ejection (CME) has stripped all modern conveniences from a modern society. It forces Sean to make critical decisions fortified by the strong women in his family; wife Kate and the sagacious humor of his daughter-in-law Ling. Their relationship with the nearby village of South Branch begins to develop though long-standing traditions and innovative adaptations toward survival in stark contrast to the choices of others outside the little community. Violence threatens the family and the village on separate occasions but they deal with it in their own way.
The family and village residents set forth to use their traditions, wits, and resourcefulness in an attempt to endure as much as a year without electricity or any outside assistance.
