Novel hits too close to home

EAGLE ISLAND, by Bernard E. Dethier and Merrily M. Dethier, Vantage Press, New York, 2000, 278 pages, $21.50.

The scene painted in “Eagle Island,” a profoundly depressing, yet compelling novel by the late Bernard E. Dethier and wife Merrily M. Dethier, is frighteningly reminiscent of the World Trade Towers tragedy in New York City. Unnamed terrorists bomb both Washington and Moscow, setting off World War III.

If the now familiar scene of destruction in New York disturbs you, this book will scare the hell out of you. The piles of rubble with lifeless bodies littering the landscape are all too familiar to us now, after the Sept. 11 attack. But this destruction is far, far worse and much, much closer to home.

“The errant missile from the [Russian submarine] Lasaseeny impacted between Prospect and Verona, well off target. The ground blast introduced little material into the atmosphere but sent such a massive shock wave through the Earth, the suspension bridge over the Penobscot buckled, then collapsed, sending hundreds to their death as they tried in vain to escape the forest fires around them.”

The scene is set on Eagle Island, just off Deer Isle, but the novel’s description fails to match the “real” Eagle Island in size, configuration or population.

The first rule in writing novels is to concentrate on what you know. Bernard Dethier was professor emeritus at Cornell University before his retirement and served as the Maine state climatologist. Merrily Dethier was an administrative aide in Cornell’s agronomy department. Upon their retirement the couple built a home overlooking Blue Hill Bay, complete with garden, orchard and vineyards, dogs and geese.

That knowledge was well-used in “Eagle Island.”

In the book, retired meteorologist Bert Crawford correctly deduces that the world situation is deteriorating before his eyes. At an international conference on the possible effects of a “nuclear winter” caused by a thermonuclear war, Crawford determines that one of the best locations to survive such a disaster is Penobscot Bay, notably his summer home on Eagle Island. Much to the consternation of his family, he starts stockpiling fuel and food and begs his family to join him on the island.

When he refuses to explain his actions to avoid panic, the family thinks these are the initial signs of senile dementia and consider a medical intervention.

But Crawford guesses correctly when he tells a friend that “I don’t think that a nuclear war is going to be deliberate. I think it’s going to be an accident, a computer malfunction or a breakdown in communications. But once it’s underway, each side will continue to retaliate … . If there is a nuclear attack regardless of who initiates it, it may be the end of human life on this planet as we know it.”

The prescient conference has illustrated that it will not be just the immediate effects of the explosions, but the long-term effects of the soot, dust, smoke and gasses that will fill the atmosphere so much that that “it could plunge us into almost total darkness. It could block the sun’s heat and light to the extent that we are thrown into a cold, dark winter regardless of the time of year.”

Any novel with a similar theme would be upsetting. But to read about the careful destruction of Maine landmarks so soon after watching the destruction in New York is disturbing.

“The initial explosion that Meg witnessed was the destruction of the Bath Iron Works, builder of missile cruisers. This was followed in rapid succession by the destruction of Moscow, Maine to the northwest, site of the OTH-B radar system; Columbia Falls to the northeast, site of radar receivers, and Bangor to the north-northwest, site of the sector control center for the anticruise missile operations.

“‘Oh My God. No It can’t be happening. That was Bangor,’ Crawford screamed as his mind whirled with the mental picture of the carnage that was underway.”

The new “nuclear family” of friends, relatives and stragglers that somehow assembled on the Penobscot Bay island are in far better shape than their mainland neighbors, thanks to the careful planning of Crawford and the bountiful garden managed by his wife. They hole up in their island home during the initial stages of heavy nuclear radiation. Their situation is aided by the fortunate addition of a wind generator.

The major hole in the plot that drove me crazy was the absence of a Geiger counter. Any educated man who planned to survive a nuclear winter would have packed that away along with his food, fuel, shotguns and reading material.

The plot is almost like a Western novel with the family huddled in their log cabin awaiting the Indian attack. But this attack is far more formidable than bows and arrows. They must assume that all their friends and loved ones not on their island have been lost to the surrounding mushroom clouds.

In the end, it was not the bombs or the fires that became their greatest danger but the black despair of the end of life as they had known it, millions of deaths including family members who could not make it “home” to the island. Eventually, the survivors lose interest in meal preparation, housekeeping, even care of the children.

Somehow the band survives the winter months, looters, accidents, a shooting and a birth, by eating every scrap of food they had packed away. But the ending is far from clear after an errant radio transmission is received and a jet fighter roars overhead to give grateful evidence that they are not alone.

But whose jet fighter is it? Who is on the radio?

“They are in charge … in command of whatever is left. A military dictatorship if they were lucky; An army of lawless individuals if they were not,” Crawford muses.

Was it worth surviving?

Winston Churchill once said that in any nuclear war, “the survivors will envy the dead.”