April 22 is Earth Day, and a continued reminder of the importance of protecting our planet and ensuring a better future for all of its inhabitants. From conservation work to sustainability initiatives to small everyday changes, everyone has a part to play in making a difference.
It’s easy to feel helpless and overwhelmed by the reality of climate change, but fear not. Numerous authors have turned their attention towards telling stories — both real and fictional — to make your reading experience both educational and enjoyable. These new and upcoming releases are the perfect excuse to relax outdoors, soak up some sun, and dream of a better future — before going out there and making it a reality.
Land Marks by Maryann Lesert
In the northwoods of Michigan, four activist college students risk it all to battle fracking — an environmentally damaging process of extracting natural gas and oil. Kate, Brett, Sonya and Mark join their former professor in the fight against North American Energy (NorA) as their frack well sites deep in the state forests expand further than they could have imagined. The band of grassroots activists form a plan to prevent more irreversible damage from being done to the planet. Can this David vs. Goliath fight succeed, and will love and solidarity win? Suspenseful, poignant, and galvanizing, Land Marks is a tribute to the waterways that connect us, the land that sustains us, and the moments that inspire us to rise up together to say, “No more!”
The Morningside by Téa Obreht
There are the stories we tell, and those we’d rather leave behind. Silvia’s home, a once-vibrant city, is now half-underwater. She doesn’t know where she was born, or why she had her mother had to leave their ancestral home. With a past shrouded in mystery and a city being swallowed, Silvia does everything to learn about the world around her and soon discovers a mysterious woman who lives in the Morningside’s penthouse. What secrets are buried in Silvia’s past, and why doesn’t anybody want her to know about them? “Read in the context of today’s conflicts and injustices, climate emergencies, and political and racial divisions — together more dystopian than any dystopian novel — the book surprised me most with its undercurrent of hope,” says Jessamine Chan, author of The School for Good Mothers.
We Loved It All: A Memory of Life by Lydia Millet
This “anti-memoir” explores life on a planet that is threatened by environmental changes. With a quarter century of wildlife and climate advocacy under her belt, Lydia Millet pairs her personal experience with her connections to animals and plants. A meditative look at our relationships, families and careers, We Loved It All seeks to understand why we deny ourselves the company of nature and the inspiration it provides. The fear and grief of extinction and climate change, Millet suggests, are forms of love that might be turned to resistance. Above all, this impressive work reminds us that we are not the only inhabitants of this earth, and must strive to protect, preserve and coexist with the natural world.
The Forgetters by Greg Sarris
The Forgetters is a short story cycle about cultural loss and re-learning the history of the land through an Indigenous lens. In the classic style of Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok creation stories, this book vaults from the sacred time before this time to the recent present and then into the near future. Two crow sisters —Question Woman and Answer Woman— tell stories from dawn to dusk. Though Question Woman cannot remember stories except by asking to hear them again, and Answer Woman can tell all the stories but cannot think of them unless she is asked. Together, they share the stories of the Forgetters — people who have forgotten their roots and consequently hurt the Earth and each other. A boy opens the clouds in the sky, a young woman befriends three enigmatic people who might also be animals, two village leaders hold a storytelling contest. Each story asks vital questions: how can understanding our past help us repair the rifts in our lives? Can storytelling revitalize our relationship with the environment?
Hum by Helen Phillips
(Coming August 6) Hum combines the immediacy of our current fears about Artificial Intelligence, government surveillance and the ongoing climate crisis. In a city forever altered by climate change, intelligent robots are around every corner. After May, a wife and mother, loses her job to AI, she undergoes a procedure to alter her face so that she will be unrecognizable to surveillance. As May and her family seek refuge in a botanical garden, one of the only places that retains some semblance of the world before, she learns this idyllic haven is not as it appears. This work of speculative fiction imagines a future that doesn’t seem far off — global warming has taken hold, technology has become a major part of society, and the world balances between dystopia and utopia. As New York Times bestselling author Jeff VanderMeer says, “Helen Phillips, in typical bravura fashion, has found a way to make visible uncomfortable truths about our present by interrogating the near-future.”
In This Ravishing World by Nina Schuyler
(Coming July 2) This inspiring collection of nine short stories rings out with everything from joy to despair to hope for the future of our planet. Combining multiple voices of activists, artists, dreamers, escapists and those holding out hope, This Ravishing World inspires resistance and change in each section. An older woman who has spent her entire life fighting for the planet sinks into despair. A young boy is determined to bring the natural world to his bleak urban reality. A scientist working to solve the plastic problem grapples with whether to have a child. A ballet dancer endeavors to inhabit the consciousness of a rat. Celebrating the beauty of the world, the darkness and anger climate destruction causes and those who are grappling with the worst of it, this story is the perfect reminder of the difference we can make.
