Friday, October 19, 2007

Survival Fiction/ Night of the Howling Dogs


Graham Salisbury's Eyes of the Emperor is his best work. Everything else pales in comparison to that, but he is always a solid, dependable author.

Night of the Howling Dogs is based on the true story of a scout troupe camping in Hawaii and getting caught up in an earthquake and subsequent tsunami in 1975. Salisbury visited the site with one of the survivors, which adds an immediacy to the story.

There is a lot of set up before the event-- there are rivalries and problems in the scout troupe, as well as description of the preparations for camping, and the camping before hand. What will sell the book, however, is the scenes involving the catastrophe. Just yesterday I had a student who wanted, very specifically, books about natural disasters, and I was able to send her off with Ruckman's Night of the Twisters and Cotton's Quake. This is a book to add to that.

Survival fiction has some die hard fans. Here are some additional titles. And yes, the list should probably be called "If you liked Hatchet". A quirky list with older titles.

Blackwood. Wild Timothy.
Carter. Between a Rock and a Hard Place.
Dygard. Wilderness Peril. River Danger.
George. My Side of the Mountain.
Gutman. Getting Air.
Hobbs. Downriver.
Houston. Frozen Fire.
Howard. The Ostrich Chase.
Kehret. Earthquake Terror.
Kelleher. Rescue!
Korman. Island, Dive, Everest (all series).
Marshall. Walkabout.
Mazer. Snowbound.
Napoli. Stones in Water.
Smith. Peak.
Mikaelson. Touching Spirit Bear.
Phleger. Pilot Down, Presumed Dead.
Roth. The Iceberg Hermit.

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