The Light Pirate

I really liked this book by Lily Brooks-Dalton, which is essentially a tale of the coming apocalype due to climate change. But "it is not so dystopian" (the New York Times) and is, in fact, "a redemptive tale" (Library Journal) and "a tender meditation on change and adaptability" (BookReporter.com). When the book opens, Florida is already suffering the consequences of gradually rising ocean levels. The family of Kirby, his new and pregnant wife Frida and Kirby's two sons from his first wife live in the small town of Rudder, which is directly in the path of the hurricane season's 3rd storm, Wanda. Kirby Lowe, an electrical line worker has his hands full trying to restore power and leaves his two sons, Flip and Lucas, in the care of their pregnant step-mother. Without telling Frida, the boys take off on an adventure before the storm arrives and one of them never makes it home. Frida goes into labor and delivers a baby girl who she names after the storm. Kirby gets home to find his wife dying on the kitchen floor and an infant girl wrapped in her arms and demanding attention. Wanda, who was “born at exactly the wrong time, under exactly the wrong circumstances, given exactly the wrong name,” becomes the victim of bullying as she grows up and her father eventually entrusts her after-school care to a neighbor, Phyllis. Phyllis is a biology teacher and a survivalist who makes frequent excursions into the woods to study the effects of the changing climate on the local flora and fauna. Wanda joins her on her excursions and picks up much of Phyllis' knowledge about both the environment and survivalism. We follow Wanda as she loses her home, her family members, and finally she also loses Phyllis. But she has learned how to survive in the new world of water where Florida once stood, and even finds a new sense of community. 

 Kirkus closes their review of the book with this: "Brooks-Dalton creates an all-too-believable picture of nature reclaiming Florida from its human inhabitants, and her complex and engaging characters make climate disaster a vividly individual experience rather than an abstract subject of debate." Similar to other reviewers, The New York Journal of Books sees both the dark and the light of this story: "But there is a luminescence here, a force that takes on a quality of the intelligence of the universe. In the glow of that light, hope and exhilaration bloom. And in these moments before the new, violent storm hits its readers, the world of this novel is unforgettable." I would agree with Marie Claire's reviewer who says the book is "Reminiscent of Delia Owens' Where the Crawdads Sing." Maybe this will also be a future movie.