In book one of Sudden Quiet, society has collapsed, the modern age has expired, and global mortality is curving toward 99 percent. In northern Michigan, the electrical grid has been down for over a year.

Three scouts journey from Beaver Island to the darkened mainland. They’re on a search for allies and information, led by Keith Two-Crow, a Vietnam veteran and Ojibwe elder.

Keith’s two charges, Mukwa and Miin, are foster siblings unrelated by blood but connected to the green-pulse of the planet by their adoptive grandmother, Samantha, a traditional healer and mystic. After reaching the mainland, the scouts are targeted by traffickers, abducted by eco-elves, and are astonished—as readers will be—at Mother Nature’s resurgence.

Island and Main is a dark exploration of humanity and the hope and healing offered by community and our connection to nature. --------------------------------------------------Joshua Veith is an educator, adventurer, and outdoor enthusiast.

He has traveled to more than 30 countries—including China, Nepal, Syria, and Turkey—and once made a 19-day Pacific Ocean crossing on a cargo freighter from Seattle to Hong Kong. For three years Josh worked as a deckhand on commercial fishing trawlers on the Atlantic.

He spent a year studying at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg and graduated from the University of Michigan, later earning an MA in Literature from Eastern Michigan University. Today Joshua lives with his wife and two sons in northern Michigan, fishes and hikes in the same spots that Hemingway enjoyed as a young man, and teaches a class on JRR Tolkien.

As a public school teacher and writer, Josh strives to be an Indigenous ally, recognizing that traditional relationships with the environment offer the most sustainable pathways for humankind’s interaction with the planet. .