Nathan Jones - First Winter

First Winter, Book One of the Nuclear Winter series, continues the events of the five books in the Best Laid Plans series, which in order from first to last are Fuel, Shortage, Invasion, Reclamation, and Determination. This recap is included for those who haven’t had an opportunity to read Best Laid Plans, or would like to refresh their memory of the events that took place in that series.

Best Laid Plans centers around the town of Aspen Hill in Central Utah, after an attack on the refineries along the Gulf of Mexico leaves the US out of fuel overnight. This leads to a crisis few saw coming that affects the whole country and the world at large. The story largely follows the main characters Trev Smith, his cousin Lewis Halsson, and their friend Matt Larson.

Fuelbegins at the time of the attack with Trev and Matt at college in Orem, while Lewis has a shelter on the outskirts of Aspen Hill where he’s prepared for just this sort of disaster. While Trev leaves for Aspen Hill immediately, Matt decides to wait a week to see if things get better. Due to Trev’s car running out of gas, followed by a minor injury, it takes him most of that week to get home.

Meanwhile Matt watches events spiral out of control in the cities and on campus around him and decides it’s time for him to leave. On the way out the door he encounters fellow classmate Sam Hutchins, who’s been unable to get back to her family in New York and is desperate to leave the city. She knows where he can find the gas to get home, and he agrees to take her with him.

Back home they find Aspen Hill facing the problem of refugees sent their way that the town doesn’t have the means to support. The townspeople reluctantly agree to turn the refugees away. Meanwhile Matt is worried for his sister April and her family living up in Midvale who might also be refugees. He convinces Trev to help him go find them and bring them back to Aspen Hill, and the two set off on foot.

After encountering significant hardship and witnessing disturbing violence and signs of society collapsing around them, they reach Midvale to find that April’s family has been moved to a nearby refugee camp. They manage to find them there, and with some effort bring them safely home.

While they were gone the Federal Emergency Task Force, or FETF, has rolled into town with a truck of supplies and a squad of soldiers under the command of Riley Ferris. Ferris has his own idea of how the town should run things, which includes rounding up everyone’s supplies and seeing to it that the refugee camp that’s sprung up outside of town is also provided for.

Upon returning to the shelter Trev discovers that Lewis has been caching their supplies to keep FETF from getting their hands on them. Shortly after completing their first cache Ferris and his squad show up and evict the cousins from the shelter, confiscating all their remaining supplies. Unwilling to stay in town while it remains occupied, Lewis suggests they take whatever supplies they can haul on a couple wagons and make for a hideout up in the nearby Manti-La Sal National Forest, on some land owned by the Halsson family. This concludes the events of Fuel.

Shortagebegins with Matt’s family dealing with trouble in Aspen Hill from FETF, as well as from a gang operating out of the nearby refugee camp led by a psychopath named Razor. Meanwhile the cousins have made it up to the hideout and are settling in to prepare for the coming winter: hunting, fishing, and gathering as much food as possible.

Not long after the cousins arrive they witness a refugee group on the nearby Highway 31 being stalked by a group of bandits who clearly mean to attack them. Trev convinces Lewis to help the refugees and together they attack the bandits, managing to kill or drive them off. Lewis is wounded in the fight and Trev drags him back to the hideout. Meanwhile Jane Mathers, leader of the refugee group, determines the highway is no longer safe and convinces her people to take smaller backroads out of the mountains, putting them on a path towards Aspen Hill.

After weeks of struggling to feed himself and his family Matt is surprised to discover Ferris and his squad preparing to leave. The people of Aspen Hill learn that the FETF administrator has already used up all the town’s food and is taking what remains with him. His departure prompts Razor to attack the town storehouse trying to seize its supplies, killing the current Mayor in the process. Matt defends his family, including Sam, and the town, and ends up killing Razor. After that he’s assigned to lead the town’s defenders by the new Mayor, Catherine Tillman.

Winter sets in with mostly hardship and grief. Matt’s family is surviving on food from a cache Trev donated to them, living in the cousins’ abandoned shelter in their absence. During that time Matt proposes to Sam, and after a brief engagement marries her. He also encounters Jane’s refugee group, cautiously welcoming them into town and allowing them to live in the Larson house when Matt’s family moved to the shelter.

In the spring Mayor Tillman convinces Matt to seek out Trev and Lewis and see if they have any food they’d be willing to sell to a town that desperately needs it. The cousins have been surviving well in the mountains, and after a reunion they reluctantly agree to sell their cached food from the shelter, confident they’ll be able to feed themselves based on their experience at the hideout.

The town gets to work planting crops and finding ways to survive long term as spring progresses. Sam announces that she’s expecting a child, but that good news is overshadowed by disturbing reports that the Gold Bloc, a treaty of Eastern European and Asian nations that might have been responsible for the attack on the Gulf refineries in the first place, has invaded Canada and is moving to invade the weakened United States next. Trev is worried about his family, who last he’d heard were still in Michigan. They’re right in the path of the invading forces, and might have trouble getting to safety on their own.

In the meantime Ferris returns. Over the winter he’s turned his squad into a small army that’s been raiding farther north and west, and now Aspen Hill’s the next town in his path. In a tense confrontation Lewis manages to shoot Ferris, ending their planned attack. A young former soldier named Raul Gutierrez defects from the raiders and comes to Aspen Hill, hoping to make up for his crimes by defending the town. The raiders settle in for a siege, and while Lewis and Matt remain to help fight them off Trev sets off on his own on bicycle, undertaking a daunting trek to reach his family and bring them home. This concludes the events of Shortage.

Invasionbegins with Aspen Hill coming under attack by the raiders. After fending them off Matt and Lewis learn that Randall Turner, formerly the contracted police officer for Aspen Hill who left with Ferris last fall, now leads the raiders. When Lewis killed Ferris he came close to killing Turner as well, and the man has a serious grudge against the town. It’s unlikely he’ll just leave.

Lewis has been patrolling with Jane, and the two have become close. Over the course of the next few attacks they decide to get married, and since neither of them is particularly outgoing they decide to have a ceremony with just them, performed by Mayor Tillman. Lewis has been pushing for Aspen Hill’s defenders to attack the raider camps to take pressure off the besieged town, and he finally convinces Matt and the Mayor to agree to it. He and Jane stage an attack on one camp, a diversion, while Matt leads a larger attack on the opposite camp.