‘On the edge of the world’

Ladder to Heaven
by Katie Welch

Hamilton: Wolsak & Wynn, 2025
$26.00 / 9781998408276

Reviewed by Heidi Greco

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An aspect of life here on the West Coast of Canada is an ongoing awareness of the fact that we live in an earthquake-prone zone. As has been pointed out many times, a major quake is not really a matter of if but when—as the Juan de Fuca Plate will eventually slide under the mainland. But until then, it seems safe enough to read about what might occur. 

The earthquake depicted in Ladder to Heaven is massive—“9.3 on the Richter scale”: “On the Pacific Coast of North America, buildings collapsed. Thousands of people died in the first few minutes, the air crushed from their lungs. Bridges twisted, broke and toppled. Survivors said they thought the shaking would never end. Falling glass and debris struck cars. In the midst of this chaos and confusion a tsunami crashed to shore, a wall of water seven storeys high. The wave slapped down, surged inland, then washed away everything in its wake. I slept.”

The reason Del Samara, the novel’s protagonist, is able to sleep through such a disaster is that she’s with her family on their farm outside of Vernon, some 400 kilometres east of the coast, so the shaking is mild, disturbing only barn animals. But distance isn’t the only factor allowing her to sleep, as Del is hooked on high-end painkillers, the result of an injury incurred when she fell off a horse. 

With so much destruction on the Lower Mainland, Del’s husband Prax, an ambulance attendant, decides he needs to go south to offer assistance. When he leaves, he takes along their teenage son, Thane, leaving Del at home with their two daughters—twelve-year-old Cleo and the nearly-adult Amelia, who’s seventeen and in love with a guy who’s too old for her. 

Farm life gets complicated with Prax out of the picture. Neighbours across the road help out, but their help comes with some nasty strings.

And the Juan de Fuca Plate itself serves as yet another character. Katie Welch (Mad Honey), a BC author who lives in Kamloops and on Cortes Island, does an interesting kind of balancing act, inserting poetically phrased facts about it intermittently throughout the book. These asides serve as a kind of ever-shifting counterbalance played out against Del’s account of events—

Subduction was a natural process, a cycle of buildup and release. Flower buds swelled before blooming, sneezes exploded from noses, uteruses grew and shed linings, clouds massed then rained, cliffs eroded and collapsed, glaciers calved, volcanoes erupted, waves crested, seeds grew into plants that bore fruit, fruit withered and returned to the soil.
Tectonic plates shifted, shook land, and sent waves crashing in their wake.

As the book proceeds, we learn that the devastation extends well beyond the borders of BC:

Water shortages in Washington and Oregon led to long lineups, while food banks in Seattle and Portland shut their doors because of empty shelves. Highways 24 and 240 in central Washington remain closed due to radiation breaches at the Hanford Nuclear Site. Radiation danger is reported as ‘high risk’ in the area.

Del serves as the narrator for the complicated tale of all that happened both before and during the three years following the earthquake—and the audience for much of her story is a pair of basking sea lions. You may wonder how this can be, but we’re told that “After the earthquake, animals spoke. I heard them in my head and answered them out loud.”

It isn’t just Del who has this ability. Somehow, it’s become universal. And it’s not just animals whose words now make sense. When Del meets Cheng, a man who speaks Mandarin, she’s able to understand him as well. 

In case it isn’t clear yet: this book is different from other books about the aftermath of a major earthquake. For one, I’m thinking of Steven Price’s novel, Into that Darkness. Yes, the main character there also hears voices, but they’re human, and they speak English. Set in Victoria, the disaster zone is much less widespread than the one depicted in Ladder to Heaven. 

Even more pragmatic is Gregor Craigie’s On Borrowed Time, a nonfiction report on tectonic plates and the realities of earthquake possibilities—not only here on the coast, but at a surprising number of cities across the country. He reminds us all about the importance of being prepared for such an emergency situation with an accessible stash of water, food, and more. 

Unlike Cragie’s or Price’s books, Ladder to Heaven leaves us with quite a few unanswered questions. Do animals everywhere now speak, or is this phenomenon restricted only to BC, some special skill the quake has shaken into existence? Some puzzling inconsistencies dog the story: Del sees jets flying high, yet a full three years after the earthquake, living conditions in the province don’t seem to have improved. A gnarled bridge across Burrard Inlet remains the only way for people to access what remains of Vancouver; power has only been supplied again on a limited basis. And what about pre-earthquake technology? Although the book is set in the 2040s, phones and texting—even tv and radio seem at about the same level of sophistication as today’s versions. Where are the techno-implants, the Google glasses, or the yet-undreamed-of developments?

Still, regardless of such picky-pants observations, I have to say that Welch has given us a story worthy of our attention—one that’s well-told, and in an unconventional manner as it whips us from one timeframe to another without ever leaving us behind. 

While her novel certainly presents a harsh view of what may yet occur, I can only hope it never proves to be accurate. Timing of the book’s publication is very apt, as during the same week it’s released, people around the world observe The Great British Columbia ShakeOut (on October 16). That’s the day we get the warning alarm on our phones and other devices, a day that’s there to remind us just how important it is to be prepared.

[Editor’s note: Katie will launch Ladder to Heaven alongside fellow speculative fiction author Peter Darbyshire (The Mona Lisa Sacrifice) at Vancouver’s Cross & Crows (2836 Commercial Drive) on November 20th, 7pm.]

Heidi Greco lives in Surrey, where some would contend she can often still be found to be tilting at windmills. [Editor’s note: Heidi has reviewed an exhibit by Douglas Coupland and books by Jan DeGrass, Stein, Peat, and Adalian, Deirdre Simon Dore, M.A.C. Farrant, Michael Maitland, David Zieroth, Christine Lowther, Rhona McAdam, Richard Lemm, Souvankham Thammavongsa, Marguerite Pigeon, and John Gould for BCR. Three of her books have also been reviewed here: Glorious Birds, From the Heart of it All, and Practical Anxiety.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors: Trevor Marc Hughes (nonfiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster