Product Description

When the bombs fell and Western civilization ended, the residents of Hickory Hollow, Texas, scarcely noticed the difference. They were already used to fending for themselves--growing their own food, helping their neighbors survive, keeping their rural life going, much as before.

But when the Ungers--a band of renegade thieves, murderers, and ne'er-do-wells--began raiding the nearby plots, looting and killing everyone in sight, it was time to take action!

"I was reminded constantly of George R. Stewart's classic post-holocaust novel, Earth Abides. The gentle rhythms of country existence, the sense that the world will continue (with or without us), the joy of living close to the earth, the nature of community itself, all combine for a poignant tale celebrating the best of what it means to be human. In Mayhar's perceptive eyes, the World Begins in Hickory Hollow." --Robert Reginald.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23039 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 168 pages

From the Back Cover
It was a day just like any other for the Hardemans. It was filled with work-hard work-but the kind of work that let them enjoy their accomplishments, small and large, and which rewarded them with a hand-made future. It was the kind of work honest, farm-people do. But it wasn't always like this.

Zack and Lucinda left their high-paying jobs in Houston, left behind careers for a different kind of life. For too many years, they had battled to make their way in the foaming insanity that was the modern world. They had grown up as neighbors on two small, hard-run farms at the back of beyond in East Texas. The couple returned to an abandoned family farm to carve out a simpler life, one which didn't include architecture or running a fair-sized photo lab, but which did include their children, each other, and a contact with nature and the land which was important to who they were.

A little out of touch? Sure they were. They didn't even realize it when the bombs dropped. . . .

About the Author
Ardath Mayhar lives in the Attoyac River bottomlands of East Texas, where she used to raise goats, cows, chickens, rabbits and bees. She is also the author of thirty-nine published novels, the most recent of which are a sequence of Mountain Man novels (as John Kildeer) and four Pre-Columbian novels under her own name.

She and her husband Joe operate View From Orbit Books and Computers in Nacogdoches, Texas, where she writes in the back office.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The owls were mourning when the lights went out. I'll always remember that, I guess, along with a lot of other things less appropriate.

Of course, we thought nothing of it at the time. When you've shucked off the rat race and gone completely back to the land the way Zack and the kids and I had done, you don't really pay that much attention. Mainly we enjoyed being able to read by good clear light, so we kept that skinny link with our old world, though it meandered down our rutted two-track road, across the hickory flat, up through Jansen's marshy pasture, and lord knows where before hitting the highway and civilization.

Actually, it stayed out about as much as it did on. Let a cloud as big as your hat come up, and the power would go . . . though I'll admit that it did stay on, by some miracle, the time a tornado ripped through and carried our calf shed across two fences into the hog pasture. Anyway, it didn't surprise us a bit when the floor lamp gave a little crackle, and we were left in the ruddy glow that came through the window in the wood heater. The children always loved getting out the big oil lamps and trimming the wicks, then sitting around swapping tales in the mellow light.

We sat there that night, snug and close and as happy as it's ever given to people to be, and never once did we suspect that the world had just come to a big, fat, blazing end. A batch of hickory nut fudge was in the middle of the table, and Zack was whittling shutter pins from a sapling we had to take out of the new garden ground. I was making willow-switch baskets, and the two youngsters were halfway playing Monopoly and halfway keeping up conversation with us between disputes about who had bought Park Place.

It was the first really chilly night of fall. Those unsecured shutters were rattling their catches in the brisk wind, making Zack cut away faster than usual. Before Grandmam's old cuckoo clock got around to announcing nine o'clock, he had the whole pile done, and we made a procession to light his way so he could fit them into the hasps. Then we all stood in a close knot, Zack's arms around me, mine around Jim and Sukie, while they tried frantically to keep from setting the whole mess of us afire with their candles. For a long moment we were secure. Totally, unreservedly secure.

Customer Reviews

Home spun post apocolypse survival!
I am a sucker for a good post apocolypse novel, and this more than satisfied my need for a story of survival against the odds. This is not a new novel as such - the author tells us in the introduction that it was written in the 80s, at the tail end of the cold war, when perhaps global nuclear anihilation was possible (and we do have to ask ourselves has this threat passed us by?), but it is still a fresh and intelligent novel nonetheless.

The plot is simple enough - a family who has decided to return to their farming roots are relatively untouched by the problems of global destruction, and are well placed to continue with the sort of down-to-earth pragmatism that you would expect from such practical folk. They form a small community with other locals they have rescued, particularly the elderly and the young - with the former providing many useful skills and knowledge that had been for the most part lost to the modern world. They survive very nicely, fighting off the occasional violent raids of a group of people who had lived ostracised from society prior to the bombs, and who raid causing indiscriminate death and destruction.

This is an entertaining and engaging novel for the genre; if I give it 4 stars instead of 5, it is because the "home spun" style of storytelling means that we don't get any insight into what has happened outside of the small community, nor any into what is driving the evil doers who rampage without seeming thought or logic.

However, it is very entertaining and well written, and I recommend it not just for fans of the genre, but for those who enjoy a tale which celebrates skills and community perhaps now gone.

a great book
This book follows the idea of Alas Babylon with a few very lucky survivors in just the right place after the Nuclear war it looks a little deeper though in what we as a materialistic society value in people and possessions and just what they are worth when the chips are down, Great read. This will be one I read over and over again.

The World Begins Anew at Hickory Hollow
As a recent, yet avid fan of post-apocalyptic literature, I snagged this book with a number of other titles. I put it off because other titles were more "revered" within the genre, but took it with me on vacation. Thank goodness I did! What a great little novel about a survivalist family who had given up on modern conveniences long before bombings ended civilization as we know it. They had already begun their life without electricity, grocery stores, etc. and didn't even know what happened to the rest of the world for a week! When they finally do realize what has happened, they begin to take in those around them who wish to join and form a little "community" that is anything but what we consider to be conventional. They travel to see how their neighbors are faring and come across the "weird" family everyone has ignored for years- only now there is no authority to keep this family in check and they have become a murdering band of thieves.

This is a really amazing story about a family that makes an awful situation work. It is also interesting how the emphasis is on hope and survival within a pretty desolate genre. I urge you to give this short novel a chance. It ends a little abruptly, in my opinion, but I could almost see my fantasies of abandoning civilized life and moving out west coming to life with this story! I think it would be better titled "The World Begins Anew at Hickory Hollow".