Director Keith Halliday's Moonshadows is set in a fictional, but grounded, future Whitehorse
It's a few years in the future, but the conflicts are still palpable: debate over measures to limit fossil fuel consumption, migration, and pandemics are deepening fissures in Yukon society — and tensions are escalating with explosive results.
She is the near-future version of the character White Horse in Keith Halliday's recently released novel Moon shadows Some aspects of the place will be very familiar to locals, from the name of the Gray Mountain biking trails to the deep potholes in the Airport Chalet parking lot. It is different in many other ways as the problems accelerate: recent wildfires have burned more than just the outskirts of the city and indigenous women have drowned in the Yukon River, raising suspicions but limited police action.
The book is rooted in a fictional future Yukon but obliquely references a global crisis, pointing to climate-induced famine in northern India and an increase in illegal immigration that includes people smuggled across the Alaska border near Beaver Creek.
Those waging the struggle in Whitehorse in Halliday's near future are the “Freedos,” a more militant version of the Freedom Caravan and anti-government movements that emerged in the early years of the 2020s, and the “Yukon Climate Group,” an environmental group that has seen interest decline Amidst unpopular government fuel rationing but who needs to keep the donations coming in.
“The world that I was creating during my two years in the Yukon was a little bit inspired by the social struggle during the pandemic, where we had the pro- and anti-vaccine movements, and I was trying to figure out a way to depict a world where the situation had become worse by a factor of 10,” Halliday said.
He said the carbon regulation depicted in the book and set in the wake of a series of natural disasters is a wedge issue that most readers should be able to easily see as immediately divisive.
Moon shadows It has been described as a “Yukon noir climatic thriller”. It has a protagonist who fits the genre. Winter Slade is a grizzled, long-time reporter for fairy tales Yukon Sun. Through the book's plot, he navigates probation, battles addiction, and falls into the arms of a beautiful woman, all of which may play a role in the writing of yesteryear's gray detective films. Halliday says the decision to write Slade as a local reporter rather than a member of law enforcement was made for more than one reason.
“A journalist is in a really good position to move in different circles and see what's really going on and see things from different points of view. So it's a great literary device. And the second thing, you know, is that I was a newspaper columnist NewsI think local newspapers are really important. “I kind of wanted to, you know, remind the reader how much passion and effort goes into covering local news,” Halliday said.
Halliday, who is also a published children's book author, Yukon history podcaster, and News Columnist, it took about a year to bring him on board Moon shadows To the page. He said he got the idea for the book when he was at the Pioneer Bar in Anchorage and heard a discussion about novels set there. He had also just noticed the sand condition in some parts of Alaska's largest city.
“I think Whitehorse, like Anchorage, operates on two levels. You know, there's the tourism level and the advertising and the beautiful mountains and the smiling people in hiking gear. And then, you know, if you're downtown at night, or along the waterfront, The city we live in is completely different and much darker.
To complement his troubled past with his pioneering correspondent, Halliday crafts a large cast of characters. Most of them are directly involved in the struggle over climate measures, and almost all of them have clear views on the topic.
“As I was working on the characters, I didn't want any of them to be too, you know, two-dimensional, or to be, quote, villains,” the author said.
“These characters live in our society. There are people we all know who think like them or are kind of like them, today. So I really wanted the characters to stand up and be their own people, not to be caricatures.”
Some characters seem contradictory in their pursuit of environmental and social justice, some are obsessed with neglecting their sense of freedom and others are downright racist. Halliday has taken great pains to present every detail of his inner life carefully and realistically.
“I think it helps that I grew up in the Yukon and know a lot of people with different backgrounds and different points of view, because I did my best to get inside the heads of different characters that you know, and very different points of view on what's happening in the story.”
He believes that growing up in Whitehorse gave him access to the lives of a greater variety of people, whereas someone living in a larger city might be more isolated in their social strata.
Halliday says his primary audience is Yukon residents and that they would benefit most from local color Moon shadowsPages. He still wanted to leave the book accessible to an outside audience but said he presented the setting in such a way that they could piece together information to learn about the Yukon way of life.
As the book's plot thickens, it seems certain that the central conflict descends into violence. Despite the realism Halliday portrays, he doesn't believe uncontrolled escalation is a lost outcome for the real Yukon of 2024.
“I think to avoid this future, you need both sides to be more sympathetic to the other side, you know, to understand from a green point of view that adapting to new types of energy and new costs for families is actually, you know, paradoxical and difficult to manage,” he said. .
“Then we also need the people who talk about the Freedom Flotilla movement in the book, and we need them to understand the science and that this is actually a major global problem that needs to be solved and can be solved.” It wouldn't have been put off too far into the future, without some of these truly disastrous effects depicted in the book.
Halliday sees this focus on empathy as a potential call to action that readers might glean from the book.
Moon shadows It is already available via online retailers and will also be available in local stores. Halliday will hold a book signing at Mac's Fireweed in downtown Whitehorse from 11am-1pm on February 17.
Contact Jim Elliott at jim.elliot@yukon-news.com
