In Caroline Adderson’s suspenseful third novel, it is 2005. Jane is happily married to Joe, a doctor. They have a teenage son. She works as a freelance editor. But as Jane’s story opens, her memory is triggered when she unfolds the newspaper one morning and finds a photo of her former friend, Sonia, on the front page. Sonia, who has just been released from prison after serving a 20-year sentence on a terrorism charge, was a prominent member of Jane’s inner circle during her second year at UBC. Jane, as it turns out, has a secret in her past, and the reader subsequently spends most of The Sky is Falling with Jane in Vancouver during that fateful fall and winter of 1983-84. In September 1983, shy, studious, nineteen-year-old Jane, from Edmonton, is starting her second undergrad year at UBC, studying Russian Language and Literature. Having roomed with her watchful aunt in the city’s suburbs the previous year, for her second she wants to live closer to campus. Toward this end, she quells her misgivings and takes a room in a boarding house, sharing the (somewhat squalid) accommodations with three other students. Jane has made this bold move toward independence at a time of tense political uncertainty. Never friendly, Soviet-American relations have deteriorated further after the Russian military shot down a Korean airliner that strayed into Soviet airspace. The two countries have spent the weeks since that incident rattling sabres at each other, and with the specter of nuclear annihilation looming over the planet, peace advocates everywhere have been staging demonstrations. Jane’s three housemates, Pete, a self-proclaimed anarchist, Sonia and Dieter, have formed a group called NAG! (Non-Violent Action Group). Their activities so far have been largely mischievous, but they have plans to take their activism to the next level. The group’s muddled ideology forms a backdrop to Adderson’s vividly imagined story of misplaced allegiance. Jane, who has never regarded herself as radical or opinionated, is drawn into the fray by the unavoidable politics of the day and the urgency of the group’s desire to get their message out. But Jane’s adherence to the cause is not entirely political. Even as she is repelled by Pete’s narcissism and Dieter’s petulance, she finds herself slowly falling for Sonia, a small-boned sparrow of a woman whose apparent vulnerability arouses in Jane a protective impulse that is new to her. But Sonia is stronger than she looks, especially when it comes to her convictions. From time to time, Adderson interrupts Jane’s backstory with contemporary scenes in which middle-aged Jane considers her past in light of the present, confronts her lingering guilt and struggles with a decision whether or not to contact newly free Sonia, if only to prove to herself that her youthful fascination with the woman was a temporary lapse in judgment. Meanwhile, back in 1984, NAG! sets its action plan in motion. But everything goes spectacularly, tragically awry, and Pete and Sonia end up in jail. In The Sky is Falling, Caroline Adderson has written a modern coming-of-age story that chillingly evokes Cold War era tensions and builds a suspenseful and shocking tale around a group of earnest young men and women who are willing to go to extremes to do something about the state of the world. Published in 2010, The Sky is Falling is engaging and thought-provoking, and, in 2022, ominously relevant. ( )

didn't like it