The Displacements
A Novel
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4.1 • 42 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
“Hypnotic.” – New York Times
“Cinematic.” – USA Today
"I gripped the covers of this book as though it might be blown from my hands. . .powerful." - Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"A full-throttle page turner."– Miranda Cowley Heller, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Paper Palace
An adrenaline-fueled story of lives upended and transformed by an unprecedented catastrophe
To all appearances, the Larsen-Hall family has everything: healthy children, a stable marriage, a lucrative career for Brantley, and the means for Daphne to pursue her art full-time. Their deluxe new Miami life has just clicked into place when Luna—the world’s first category 6 hurricane—upends everything they have taken for granted.
When the storm makes landfall, it triggers a descent of another sort. Their home destroyed, two of its members missing, and finances abruptly cut off, the family finds everything they assumed about their lives now up for grabs. Swept into a mass rush of evacuees from across the American South, they are transported hundreds of miles to a FEMA megashelter where their new community includes an insurance-agent-turned-drug dealer, a group of vulnerable children, and a dedicated relief worker trying to keep the peace. Will “normal” ever return?
A suspenseful read plotted on a vast national tapestry, The Displacements thrillingly explores what happens when privilege is lost and resilience is tested in a swiftly changing world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Holsinger's harrowing novel of environmental disaster (after The Gifted School), an unprecedented category 6 hurricane obliterates Miami and disrupts a once-charmed family. Before the storm hits, Daphne Larsen-Hall has a great life—pampered wife of a wealthy surgeon, with a two-million-dollar home in Coral Gables and two bright children, Oliver and Mia. But after Hurricane Luna, Daphne's life is upended. Homeless and penniless due to a cascading series of setbacks, she and the children end up evacuated to a megashelter in Oklahoma run by no-nonsense FEMA official Rain Holton. There, among 10,000 other evacuees, her sullen stepson Gavin falls under the spell of two drug dealers and Mia becomes obsessed with playing a kids' game called Range. Then, after the final indignity of losing her wedding and engagement rings, Daphne decides to become an art teacher in the camp. Two months in, many evacuees have formed "ethnic enclaves," including one called Crackertown, which Holsinger describes as a "dark edge of pride in self-designation." Then Rain contends with a new weather emergency threatening the shelter. Holsinger does a good job exploring the country's cultural and economic divisions and the effects of climate change, and is even better with the characters and their ever-mounting problems. This story of displacement and desperation packs a wallop.
Customer Reviews
Frightening Insights
A pager turn that spins with the fury of a Cat. 6.