In this compelling collection of journal entries, an award-winning writer responds to the grief and fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic and other civilization-threatening dangers. After a year of weekly entries, John Rember ended his Journal of the Plague Years: End Notes in March of 2021. But the pandemic wasn’t over. This second volume, Ghost Dance , starts in September 2021. It expands the meaning of plague to include wars, population growth, undeniable climate change, increasingly corrupt and fraudulent politics, toxic social media, and a murderous tribalism. Obviously, the times still needed a witness. Ghost Dance is a collection of essays examining human attempts to impose grace on a world where a chaotic present has cut ties with the remembered past. Like the original ghost dancers, these writings focus on the green world that still exists beneath a human-constructed reality. Rember looks for the stories and the rituals that might, however improbably, make that world a place where humans can live. Written at a time near the end of this country’s history, the three volumes of Journal of the Plague Years offer a primary source for historians of the future, should there be any. "In these thoughtful, prescient pieces there are no zombies or post-nuclear mutants or most of the other things we talk a lot about when we imagine the End of the World. Instead, John writes about what it really means. Sometimes it's worth asking what's ending, and what's beginning. Look at these books as a survival kit for your sanity for the next time the Apocalypse rolls around." — Christopher Farnsworth, bestselling author of Blood Oath , Killfile , and Robert B. Parker's Buried Secrets "In book 2 of this series, the author moves from bearing witness to the onslaught of the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020/2021 to the harsh reality of living with it and other existential threats afterwards. There is a narrative arc to these journals that sheds light on a path forward in a perilous world." — Mike O'Mary, author of The Note John Rember is the author of nine books and numerous magazine and newspaper articles. He was a professor of writing for many years at The College of Idaho in Caldwell and in the Pacific University MFA program in Forest Grove, Oregon. John lives in the Sawtooth Valley of central Idaho.