After the Flood
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
Children think we make them, but we don’t … They come into the world and make us. They make us by breaking us first.
‘Utterly gripping’ Karin Slaughter
‘Impossible to put down’ Booklist
‘Undeniable, brilliantly written’ Theodore Wheeler
‘Thrilling’ Lydia Kang
The world is mostly water when Pearl is born. The floods have left America a cluster of small islands with roving trade ships and raiders.
Pearl knows little of her father Jacob and elder sister Row, who left her mother Myra when she was pregnant with her. Between them they make do, with Myra fishing and trading to make ends meet, travelling from island to island on Bird, the boat Myra’s grandfather made before he died.
Whilst their life is a tranquil one, Myra still aches for the daughter she once lost. When a chance encounter reveals that Row might still be alive, Myra packs up six-year-old Pearl and together they begin a dangerous voyage to The Valley, where rumours of violence and breeding ships run rampant.
Along the way they encounter death and strangers, finally finding solace on board Sedna – full to the brim with supplies and an able crew – where Myra feels like she might be closer to finding Row than she has ever been. But to get to Row she will have to deceive everyone around her, betraying the trust of those she’s come to love, and ask herself if she’s willing to sacrifice everything and everyone for what might be nothing at all.
About the author
Kassandra Montag is a poet and novelist. Her work has appeared in Mystery Weekly Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, and Prairie Schooner, among other literary journals. She has won the Plainsongs Award, New Year's Poet Award, and 1877 Award.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Montag's first novel, an intriguing and innovative woman-centered swashbuckling quest narrative, centers on the social impact of climate change a little over a century from now. At the heart of the story is a mother's effort to protect her eight-year-old daughter and rescue her 12-year-old daughter from possible internment aboard a "breeding ship," where "raider" crews force captive women to become pregnant. Myra inhabits a water-inundated world in which people live on boats or in mountaintop community enclaves. After Myra's husband, Jacob, kidnaps her elder daughter, Rowena (called Row), she and her younger daughter, Pearl, live on a boat called Bird; they survive alone by trading fish until Myra saves the life of a navigator named Daniel. When Bird sinks, the three join a larger community aboard Sedna, where Myra, obsessed with rescuing Row, stops at nothing to convince the charismatic captain to perilously sail north to where she believes Row is located. Readers who enjoy postapocalyptic fiction and strong female heroes will appreciate Myra, a super-survivalist who combines Wonder Woman's physical prowess and the unsinkable Molly Brown's resilience. The endless series of crises facing Myra becomes wearying after a while, and those hoping for an optimistic conclusion will be disappointed. Nonetheless, this is a promising debut that will generally please fans of climate apocalypse stories.
