Imagine this: you are skiing with your husband at a fabulous resort when an avalanche suddenly strikes and you find yourself completely buried under the snow. You realize you’re trapped upside down, but amazingly, you manage to dig yourself out with your fingernails. Your husband calls to you and you are reunited. It’s a miracle; you both survived. But as you wander down the mountain and back to your hotel, you realize that you aren’t seeing any other people. There is no one else on the slopes, and no one else in the hotel either. You both conclude that there must have been an evacuation; everyone left the resort because they knew the avalanche was coming. But, you can’t confirm this, because you can’t get any cell phone reception, land lines ring unanswered, and there is no cable TV reception either. You decide to try to flee the village any way you can – on foot, in a borrowed vehicle, even cross country skiing. But no matter what you do, you can’t seem to escape…
This is the fascinating premise of Graham Joyce’s latest novel, The Silent Land. A highly suspenseful and atmospheric novel, I loved being drawn into this cold, strange world where a clever plot is used to explore spirituality, relationships, and both the joys and sorrows of life.