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Summary
Summary
FINALIST FOR THE DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE
Set in the near future, this hopeful story of survival and resilience follows Wanda--a luminous child born out of a devastating hurricane--as she navigates a rapidly changing world: A "symphony of beauty and heartbreak" (Associated Press).
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A Good Morning America Book Club pick · #1 Indie Next pick · LibraryReads pick · Book of the Month Club selection · Marie Claire #ReadWithMC book club selection · 2022 NPR "Book We Love" · New York Times Editors' Choice
Florida is slipping away. As devastating weather patterns and rising sea levels wreak gradual havoc on the state's infrastructure, a powerful hurricane approaches a small town on the southeastern coast. Kirby Lowe, an electrical line worker, his pregnant wife, Frida, and their two sons, Flip and Lucas, prepare for the worst. When the boys go missing just before the hurricane hits, Kirby heads out into the high winds in search of his children. Left alone, Frida goes into premature labor and gives birth to an unusual child, Wanda, whom she names after the catastrophic storm that ushers her into a society closer to collapse than ever before.
As Florida continues to unravel, Wanda grows. Moving from childhood to adulthood, adapting not only to the changing landscape, but also to the people who stayed behind in a place abandoned by civilization, Wanda loses family, gains community, and ultimately, seeks adventure, love, and purpose in a place remade by nature.
Told in four parts--power, water, light, and time-- The Light Pirate mirrors the rhythms of the elements and the sometimes quick, sometimes slow dissolution of the world as we know it. It is a meditation on the changes we would rather not see, the future we would rather not greet, and a call back to the beauty and violence of an untamable wilderness.
Author Notes
Lily Brooks-Dalton 's novel, Good Morning, Midnight (Random House, 2016), has been translated into 17 languages and is the inspiration for the film adaptation, The Midnight Sky . Her memoir, Motorcycles I've Loved (Riverhead, 2014), was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Brooks-Dalton (Good Morning, Midnight) tells the gripping if underdeveloped story of a Florida family devastated by a hurricane, with hints of magic and a transformed landscape as the timeline stretches into the near future. Kirby Lowe, a divorced electrical lineman on call to make storm damage repairs, shares custody of his two unruly sons, Lucas, 12, and Flip, eight, while his pregnant second wife, Frida, has a premonition about Wanda, the coming hurricane. During the storm, Frida gives birth, names their daughter after the hurricane, then dies shortly after Kirby returns. Flip also perished in the storm, and a neighbor, a retired teacher named Phyllis, takes baby Wanda under her wing. Later, after Wanda starts school and learns biology from Phyllis, she discovers a magical ability: when she touches the ocean's water, she attracts bioluminescence. Meanwhile, Lucas joins Kirby on line duty as they make repairs after lesser storms and wait for the next big one. Murmurs abound on the compromised Hoover Dike, which, if damaged by another major storm, could unleash catastrophic flooding from Lake Okeechobee. By the end, Brooks-Dalton's vision for what might be includes a radically changed state of Florida. Though the magical elements are unexplained and extraneous, the author sustains a steady pace from one storm to the next. Climate fiction aficionados will eat this up. (Dec.)
Kirkus Review
Climate apocalypse is the setting for a formidable young woman's coming-of-age. Kirby Lowe is a lineman for the utility company in the small town of Rudder in southeast Florida. With a huge hurricane heading in, he's called to work before it arrives. He hates leaving his pregnant wife and his two young sons at home, but they're prepared, or so they think. The first part of this novel is a harrowing description of that storm and the destruction it wreaks; the second part picks up 10 years later with Kirby and his surviving family: grown son Lucas and 10-year-old daughter Wanda, named for the hurricane during which she was born. In a convincingly portrayed near-future Florida, climate change has accelerated. The hurricanes come faster and fiercer, and the barrier island communities are already slipping under the sea. Kirby and Lucas, now also a lineman, have so much work that Wanda is often on her own, and her adventurous streak worries her father. He finds her an after-school caretaker, a retired biology professor named Phyllis, who turns out to be the perfect choice. Soon the pair are conducting field studies of the local flora and fauna, and Phyllis, who as a biologist and former park ranger has seen climate disaster coming for years, starts teaching the girl how to grow a garden, keep chickens, forage, and use other survival skills. As Wanda grows up, the waters rise higher and the summers blaze hotter, and climate refugees begin to flee the state. Before long, mostly depopulated towns shut down, then even big cities are abandoned. "Eventually," the author writes, "the federal government announced the widespread closure of Florida as a whole, as if it were a rundown theme park with a roller coaster that was no longer safe to ride." Those who remain--Wanda and Phyllis among them--are on their own. 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. Catastrophic climate change seems all too real through the eyes of a Florida girl. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Hurricanes are eating away at Rudder, Florida. With coastlines eroding all over the world, it seems impossible that the town will survive. The Lowe family clings to their home, bracing for each storm that rolls through. Frida, eight months pregnant, wants to evacuate, but spouse Kirby doesn't. He's a lineman, and the town depends on him for power. Frida is left with her stepsons, but as Kirby works in the sheeting rain, they disappear into the fray too. Ten years later, Frida's daughter, Wanda, has formed her own relationship with Rudder. Named after the storm she was born in, she's a pariah in the deteriorating town. But Wanda bonds with her neighbor Phyllis, a survivalist who plans to stay there no matter what. Wanda also finds that she has the special ability to create light along the surface of water. As the town erodes, Wanda uses her power to hang on. With disaster haunting every moment, the true ensemble cast narrates, switching points of view when necessary. Wanda doesn't appear on the page for some time, yet her presence permeates the text. Brooks-Dalton (Good Morning, Midnight, 2016) paints a luminous and wrenching portrait of a frighteningly possible future.
Library Journal Review
In this latest from Brooks-Dalton (Good Morning, Midnight), a massive hurricane bears down on a Florida town nestled south of Lake Okeechobee. For nine-months-pregnant Frida, the sounds and smells of the approaching storm trigger memories of her mother's death in Puerto Rico during Hurricane Maria. Husband Kirby, a county lineman, promises that the shutters and sandbags will provide protection while he's working, but she knows better. The contractions, too soon, too strong, immobilize Frida. When Kirby arrives, Frida is dead, and the baby, still attached to her mother's pulsing cord, whimpers on the kitchen floor. Inauspiciously named for the conflagration that upended her family, Wanda grows in the vortex of her father's guilt and sorrow. Waters rise, infrastructure fails, residents who doubted global warming abandon their homes, but retired biology professor Phyllis saves Wanda from loneliness. VERDICT Writing as if she too had lived alone in Florida's mangrove swamps, fishing by night, sleeping through the heat of the day, Brooks-Dalton turns a devastating dystopian vision on its head in this redemptive tale by asking whether life is sustainable without human connection. This exquisite novel will appeal to a diverse group of readers, from fans of environmental writers Alan Weisman and Elizabeth Kolbert to admirers of Lydia Millet's A Children's Bible and Delia Owens's hero Kya Clark.--Sally Bissell
