Review by Booklist Review
A cadre of scientists and staff, and their families, have been living on the roof of the closed American Museum of Natural History in a ravaged, mostly abandoned New York City, venturing down into Central Park to forage and hunt. But their sanctuary is destroyed when a superstorm breaches the city's floodwalls. Only four survive to escape in an old birchbark canoe long on display: Nonie, 13; her 16-year-old sister, Bix; their father, who had been an architectural curator at the Met, and Keller, a Black entomologist. Caffall channels her considerable ecological expertise and wrenching personal experiences into her commanding, heart-pounding, and haunting first novel, which follows her ravishing memoir, The Mourner's Bestiary (see p.16). As the castaways struggle to navigate treacherous waters and weather, Nonie, who hopes to become a marine scientist like her mother (who died of kidney disease), recounts their attempts to preserve and document the museum's precious, imperiled holdings. She also testifies to harrowing climate extremes, society's collapse, a mosquito-borne plague, the death of trees, and the melting of glaciers. Now these battered refugees face threats and hope for succor as they discover small communities of determined survivors. Caffall has thought through every detail, matching adrenaline-raising action with profound insights into nature, science, museums, justice, family, and compassion.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A teen paddles out of a flood-ravaged Manhattan in Caffall's high-tension dystopian debut. After New York City was sacrificed to rising seas, 13-year-old Nonie and her family stayed behind with a stubborn community of conservationists who made their home on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. When a severe storm finally destroys the museum, Nonie, her older sister Bix, their father Allan, and another adult man, Keller, are the only survivors. Using a canoe from a museum diorama, they head out on the water, hoping to reach Nonie's aunt's farm in Tyringham, Mass. Along the way, they encounter wary helpers and strange communities and face dangers from both people and the violent weather, which Nonie has developed a skill for forecasting. The emotional ballast of the story, though, is Nonie's flashbacks to their time at the museum, where former employees came together to try and save the collections and record as much as they could of Earth's past as the world crumbled. Stories of plague, gruesome death, and Nonie's mother's slow decline from kidney disease paint a bleak picture of subsistence amid the group's determined efforts to save knowledge. The plot will feel familiar to cli-fi readers, but it's affecting nonetheless. Caffall should win some fans with this. (Jan.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT This captivating postapocalyptic novel is set in and around New York City's American Museum of Natural History. Global warming has resulted in a sea level rise of unforeseen proportions. When the floodgates that keep the city dry are breached during a massive hurricane, the museum is inundated with water. The story is told from the perspective of Nonie, an adolescent insect enthusiast and the child of museum staffers who have taken flood refuge at their workplace. In the opening chapter, Nonie, older sister Bix, their father, and friend Keller barely escape the museum with their lives. After this, the book flashes back to their early days at the museum creating an embryonic community struggling to survive. The survivors flee the museum using a birchbark canoe taken from one of the exhibits and carefully make their way through the flooded city to the Hudson River. They then face a series of challenges and nearly lose everything before overcoming adversity in an epic finale. VERDICT The setting, the detailed emotive descriptions, and nail-biting adventure are incandescent. This debut novel from Caffall (The Mourner's Bestiary) is like Peter Heller's The Dog Stars met Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger, with a focus on the essential nature of community.--Henry Bankhead
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A young girl documents her escape from a flooded and now uninhabitable New York City. After the progressive decline of the World As It Was--"Storms always came. They took things"--13-year-old Nonie is adjusting to life in what remains of New York, most of the city and its people now gone. Nonie is part of a group of survivors living in a community called Amen in the remnants of the American Museum of Natural History; she handles the routine and confines of life in The World As It Is better than most, as she remembers little of the world's past freedoms and safety. She also feels a deep connection with the water, so much so that she can sense incoming storms--all except one, the hypercane, a storm that "moved faster than thought and faster than sense." This finally forces the group to abandon the relative safety of Amen and the purpose they've found in documenting the artifacts of the museum as "a duty to the future." The narrative keeps pace with the sense of urgency created by the hypercane, and Caffall brings the terrifying realities of this near-future to vivid life through expert use of sensory language: "We moved blind and clattering through dark halls, along the balcony of African animals, past the elephants. Only the tip of a single trunk visible above the flood. The stairs were wet…rain pouring in to meet the sea, the slippery marble hard to manage, the sound of breaking glass." Nonie's unique account of the survivors' journey north along the Hudson River--she has both a scientific mind and a sense of wonder--is a celebration of human perseverance at the hands of nature's awe-inspiring power. Gripping, beautifully descriptive, and likely to stay with you. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
