Trading Tree Houses for Silos
Author Hugh Howey “In the wake of losing my beloved dog,” author Hugh Howey wrote in his New Year’s blog post , “in one of my darkest of places, I began a novel that would eventually be about the redeeming power of hope. When I sign copies of WOOL for readers, I almost always write inside, “Dare to hope." Really? A mega bestselling apocalypse novel about life on earth reduced to a few thousand survivors living stifled existences inside a gargantuan buried silo, is about hope ? Yes, it really is. The novel propels us into a future where the earth is devoid of nature, and the only trees that grow are hot-house fruit trees living hundreds of feet below the earth. Paper is coveted. Books that tell the way life used to be are secreted away from the masses. Yet the people of the silo climb the spiraling central staircase, as if climbing a tree from its roots to its canopied upper branches, for the rare chance to peer out the silo’s grimy windows to a barren wind-swe...