I have been intrigued by PBS’s The Great American Read. I am ashamed to admit I haven’t even heard of some of these books! I have, however, heard of the two Alabama natives on the list. Yes, fellow Alabamians (Alabamites? Bamers? Dixie Delights?)! We have two entries on the list of most beloved novels as voted on by PBS followers. We just grow them special in the Heart of Dixie, don’t we?
Of course, topping the list is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Was there any doubt? This book is beyond description. If you haven’t read it, you should. If you haven’t seen the movie, you should.
This article isn’t about Harper Lee, though. I would instead like to talk about Birmingham native, Robert McCammon’s entry into the top 100, Swan Song. (Mr. McCammon is also a graduate of the University of Alabama. Roll Tide!)
In 1987, Robert McCammon released Swan Song, a post-apocalyptic story with elements of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. Mimicking real life, tensions were high between Russia and the United States. This tale is the ‘what-if’ of nuclear war with a fantastical spin. The United States is devastated, the President and most of the upper government are gone, and the nuclear snows devastate the land. The story quickly separates and follows different groups of survivors – a homeless woman desperately trying to escape New York City and the terrors there, a group of ‘survivalists’ in Idaho, and a small group who are initially trapped in a gas station basement in the plains of Kansas. This group consists of our most central characters, an ex-wrestler named Josh Hutchinson and a little girl named Sue Wanda, affectionately nicknamed Swan.
Each group is faced with trials and hardship, struggling to survive this new landscape. They face starvation, rogue armies, human greed, mutated creatures, and a strange fungal disease that starts to completely encapsulate the victim’s head, leading to blindness, deafness, and eventual suffocation.
I cannot praise this book enough. It is often compared to The Stand by Stephen King (indeed, Robert McCammon is often, unfortunately, and wrongly called the ‘poor man’s Stephen King). I love and adore Stephen King, but I like Swan Song better. This book feels more personal and more…ground level? Does that make sense? The Stand is based on a plague, which in the post-COVID years doesn’t seem as far-fetched as it did in the eighties. Back then, I would never have imagined the world could stop for a virus the way it did. Swan Song, however, is based on nuclear devastation, World War III. My generation grew up with the constant threat of ‘the bombs.’ We knew the President could ‘press the button’ at any time. We knew about bomb shelters and missile silos. Living in such close proximity to Redstone Arsenal, we had teachers all during our school years tell us, ‘We’ll be one of the first targets.’ Cheery thoughts for a third grader, right? But that was our reality. We didn’t live through the Black Plague or the Spanish Flu. We lived through bomb drills. So, to my teenage mind, Swan Song was something that could really happen. Probably in my lifetime.
Swan Song, like many of my favorite books, does deliver that slim, shiny glimmer of hope. Humankind is varied. Faced with hardship and struggle, some people with fall into despair, evilness, and greed. Some will simply drift, blowing in the wind of chance. Some, however, will fight for good, fight for life, fight for each other. Swan Song follows the different paths each of us would face.
I first read this book not long after it came out, so this story has rattled around in my brain for more than 35 years. I still remember the eeriness, discomfort, and fright of reading about the bombs. I still have to take deep breaths when I think about ‘Job’s Mask’ and its suffocating debilitation. I remember crying at McCammon’s words. Below is a small sample about Josh.
‘Thinking about how many millions might be lying dead out there warped Josh’s mind, like trying to figure out how big the universe was, or how many billions of stars winked in the skies. But right now, there was just this little girl, sobbing in his arms, and she could never see the world in the same way as before. No matter what happened to them, she would forever be marked by this moment—and Josh knew he would as well.’
I just love the cadence of his writing. If you haven’t read Robert McCammon, I highly recommend Swan Song. For any fan of speculative fiction or horror, his books are a treat. An intense treat, but still a treat!
From Amazon – New York Times Bestseller: A young girl’s visions offer the last hope in a postapocalyptic wasteland in this “grand and disturbing adventure” (Dean Koontz).
Swan is a nine-year-old Idaho girl following her struggling mother from one trailer park to the next when she receives visions of doom—something far wider than the narrow scope of her own beleaguered life. In a blinding flash, nuclear bombs annihilate civilization, leaving only a few buried survivors to crawl onto a scorched landscape that was once America.
In Manhattan, a homeless woman stumbles from the sewers, guided by the prophecies of a mysterious amulet, and pursued by something wicked; on Idaho’s Blue Dome Mountain, an orphaned boy falls under the influence of depraved survivalists and discovers the value of a killer instinct; and amid the devastating dust storms on the Great Plains of Nebraska, Swan forms a heart-and-soul bond with an unlikely new companion. Soon, they will cross paths. But only Swan knows that they must endure more than just a trek across an irradiated country of mutated animals, starvation, madmen, and wasteland warriors.
Swan’s visions tell of a coming malevolent force. It’s a shape-shifting embodiment of the apocalypse, and of all that is evil and despairing. And it’s hell-bent on destroying the last hope of goodness and purity in the world. Swan is that hope. Now, she must fight not only for her own survival, but for that of all mankind.
A winner of the Bram Stoker Award and a finalist for the World Fantasy Award, Swan Song has become a modern classic, called “a chilling vision that keeps you turning pages to the shocking end” by John Saul and “a long, satisfying look at hell and salvation” by Publishers Weekly.
