The Hard Tomorrow
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
"The gorgeous and empathetic story of one couple's search for hope and a peaceful future
Hannah is a thirty-something wife, home-health worker, and antiwar activist. Her husband, Johnny, is a stay-at-home pothead working—or ""working""—on building them a house before the winter chill sets in. They're currently living and screwing in the back of a truck, hoping for a pregnancy, which seems like it will never come. Legs in the air for a better chance at conception, Hannah scans fertility Reddits while Johnny dreams about propagating plants—kale, tomatoes—to ensure they have sufficient sustenance should the end-times come, which, given their fragile democracy strained under the weight of a carceral state and the risk of horrible war, doesn’t seem so far off. Helping Hannah in her fight for the future is her best friend, Gabby, a queer naturalist she idolizes and who adores her. Helping Johnny build the house is Tyler, an off-the-grid conspiracy theorist driven sick by his own cloudy notions of reality.
Told with tenderness and care in an undefined near future, Eleanor Davis's The Hard Tomorrow blazes unrestrained, as moments of human connection are doused in fear and threats. Her astute projections probe at current anxieties in a cautionary tale that begs the question: What will happen after tomorrow?"
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Davis (Why Art?) gently observes the foibles of modern social justice seekers in this vulnerable domestic drama. Hannah, a home health aide and activist, is attempting to get pregnant while she organizes grassroots leftism as her husband, Johnny, faces their future with considerably less drive. Their worlds are largely separate, as evinced through Davis's elegant, romantic, and densely drawn linework: Hannah is immersed in elder care, protesting, politics, and her charged friendship with fellow activist Gabby; while Johnny drifts from completing the building of their home to working on a noxious friend's survivalist compound. Rather than glory in the couple's flaws, from Hannah's naivet to Johnny's idleness, or sand down these rough edges, Davis presents her protagonists' messy humanity in a kind, plain light. Their miniature saga feels less like the arc of fiction and more like a few days lifted intact from real lives. But, then, Davis seems to argue that any life is rich and complicated enough to merit its own book and she convinces the reader she is right.)
