The much-anticipated first novel from a Story Prize-winning “5 Under 35” fiction writer.
In 2012, Claire Vaye Watkins’s story collection, Battleborn, swept nearly every award for short fiction. Now this young writer, widely heralded as a once-in-a-generation talent, returns with a first novel that harnesses the sweeping vision and deep heart that made her debut so arresting to a love story set in a devastatingly imagined near future:
Unrelenting drought has transfigured Southern California into a surreal, phantasmagoric landscape. With the Central Valley barren, underground aquifer drained, and Sierra snowpack entirely depleted, most “Mojavs,” prevented by both armed vigilantes and an indifferent bureaucracy from freely crossing borders to lusher regions, have allowed themselves to be evacuated to internment camps. In Los Angeles’ Laurel Canyon, two young Mojavs—Luz, once a poster child for the Bureau of Conservation and its enemies, and Ray, a veteran of the “forever war” turned surfer—squat in a starlet’s abandoned mansion. Holdouts, they subsist on rationed cola and whatever they can loot, scavenge, and improvise.
The couple’s fragile love somehow blooms in this arid place, and for the moment, it seems enough. But when they cross paths with a mysterious child, the thirst for a better future begins. They head east, a route strewn with danger: sinkholes and patrolling authorities, bandits and the brutal, omnipresent sun. Ghosting after them are rumors of a visionary dowser—a diviner for water—and his followers, who whispers say have formed a colony at the edge of a mysterious sea of dunes.
Immensely moving, profoundly disquieting, and mind-blowingly original, Watkins’s novel explores the myths we believe about others and tell about ourselves, the double-edged power of our most cherished relationships, and the shape of hope in a precarious future that may be our own.
The much-anticipated first novel from a Story Prize-winning “5 Under 35” fiction writer.
In 2012, Claire Vaye Watkins’s story collection, Battleborn, swept nearly every award for short fiction. Now this young writer, widely heralded as a once-in-a-generation talent, returns with a first novel that harnesses the sweeping vision and deep heart that made her debut so arresting to a love story set in a devastatingly imagined near future:
Unrelenting drought has transfigured Southern California into a surreal, phantasmagoric landscape. With the Central Valley barren, underground aquifer drained, and Sierra snowpack entirely depleted, most “Mojavs,” prevented by both armed vigilantes and an indifferent bureaucracy from freely crossing borders to lusher regions, have allowed themselves to be evacuated to internment camps. In Los Angeles’ Laurel Canyon, two young Mojavs—Luz, once a poster child for the Bureau of Conservation and its enemies, and Ray, a veteran of the “forever war” turned surfer—squat in a starlet’s abandoned mansion. Holdouts, they subsist on rationed cola and whatever they can loot, scavenge, and improvise.
The couple’s fragile love somehow blooms in this arid place, and for the moment, it seems enough. But when they cross paths with a mysterious child, the thirst for a better future begins. They head east, a route strewn with danger: sinkholes and patrolling authorities, bandits and the brutal, omnipresent sun. Ghosting after them are rumors of a visionary dowser—a diviner for water—and his followers, who whispers say have formed a colony at the edge of a mysterious sea of dunes.
Immensely moving, profoundly disquieting, and mind-blowingly original, Watkins’s novel explores the myths we believe about others and tell about ourselves, the double-edged power of our most cherished relationships, and the shape of hope in a precarious future that may be our own.
Critiques-
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Starred review from July 13, 2015
It's the near future: water is running out and a vast sand dune that covers whole towns is growing. Los Angeles is empty except for the hippies, survivalists, and grifters who've evaded the government-mandated evacuation. Ex-model Luz Dunn is on her way out of L.A. when she meets Ray, a soldier fresh from the "forever war." After taking in a toddler, they head for a rumored desert settlementâno simple task given the oppressive heat, gas and water shortages, and border guards. In her first novel, Watkins, a native Nevadan whose story collection Battleborn (which won multiple awards) was also set in the West, makes canny use of the region's history and myths, the way it's been shaped by dreamers (explorers, prospectors, Mormons, would-be starlets, Okies), and the limits of its water supply. Luz and Ray's story is the heart of the book, but Watkins adds an array of documents and voices depicting a West that provides nuclear-waste storage (and radioactivity) and "gold, fame, citrus"âas well as racism and government-controlled resource management. She's alive to the powerful pull of romantics, cultists, and saviors; with Levi Zabriskieâa master dowser, naturalist, conspiracy theorist, and leader of a desert communityâin particular she's added a memorable character to their roster. The book is packed with persuasive detail, luminous writing, and a grasp of the history (popular, political, natural, and imagined) needed to tell a story that is original yet familiar, strange yet all too believable. Agent: Nicole Aragi, the Aragi Agency. -
Starred review from August 1, 2015
A tour-de-force first novel blisters with drought, myth, and originality. Watkins drew gasps of praise and international prizes for Battleborn (2013), 10 short stories that burrowed into Reno, Nevada, its history, and her own. Now she clears the high bar of public expectation with a story set in a desiccated future where "practically everyone was thin now." The callow Luz Dunn, 25, a former model from Malibu, has hooked up with nice-guy Ray Hollis, a surfer and AWOL soldier from "the forever war." A large swath of the United States has gone "moonscape with sinkage, as the winds came and as Phoenix burned and as a white-hot superdune entombed Las Vegas." In "laurelless canyon," the couple squats in the abandoned mansion of a Los Angeles starlet, dodging evacuation roundups. When Luz and Ray stumble across a strange towheaded toddler, they-gingerly-form an ersatz family. But cornered with no documentation, Ray and Luz decide to scoop up the child and hit the road, seeking a rumored desert commune. It doesn't go well. A sand dune the size of a sea begins barely beyond LA. The little girl keeps asking "What is?"-a device through which Watkins drops clues. On each page she spikes her novel with a ticking, musical intelligence: the title is a list of what drew people to California; an entire chapter hums with sentences beginning with "If she went...." The territory is more alluring and dystopian than Mad Max's. Watkins writes an unforgettable scene with a carousel; another in a dank tunnel where the couple seeks contraband blueberries. The author freckles her fiction with incantations, odd detours, hallucinations, and jokes. Praised for writing landscape, Watkins' grasp of the body is just as rousing. Into the vast desert she sets loose snakes and gurus, the Messianic pulse of end times. Critics will reference Annie Proulx's bite and Joan Didion's hypnotic West, but Watkins is magnificently original. The ghost of John Muir meets a touch of Terry Gilliam.COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Starred review from August 1, 2015
Watkins' first book, the story collection Battleborn (2012), won a string of awards, including the Story Prize and New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, setting high expectations that are spectacularly exceeded by her purposefully imagined first novel. The California drought is catastrophic, forcing the population, designated Mojavs, to enact an exodus in reverse of that of the Okies who fled the Dust Bowl. A few hardy, rebellious, thirsty souls remain. Luz, a model of Mexican and Anglo parentage just famous enough to be recognized, is the embodiment of irony. At birth she was anointed the poster child for a California Bureau of Conservation water supply improvement project. Twenty-five years later, there is no water, and the desert has devoured the once fertile land. Ray is AWOL after serving in the Middle East, and his survival skills are keeping them alive as they squat in the abandoned mansion of a Hollywood starlet. But when they take in a very strange little girl, they realize that it's time to seek a safer place. Their journey across the vast, ever-changing dunes is cosmic and terrifying as Watkins conjures eerily beautiful and deadly sandscapes and a cult leader's renegade colony. In Margaret Atwood mode, Watkins spikes this fast-moving, high-tension, sexy, ecocrisis saga with caustic parodies and resounding allusions that cohere into a knowing and elegiac tale of scrappy adaptation and epic loss.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.) -
August 1, 2015
In a not-too-distant future, the nation is in the grip of an ecological disaster. Plagued by severe water shortages, the residents of California (already dwindling in number) are subjected to a forced evacuation. Luz, a former model who spent her childhood as the government's poster child for the oncoming crisis, is hiding out in a starlet's abandoned mansion in Laurel Canyon with her competent companion Ray, who has recently gone AWOL from the U.S. military. After rescuing, or possibly kidnapping, a neglected toddler from a criminal gang, they attempt to flee the lawless frontier for what they hope will be greener pastures inland. When their plans fall apart, Luz comes under the sway of the charismatic leader of an outpost in the desert, who, like many so-called prophets, might not be what he seems. In her powerful depictions of the scorched and merciless landscape, Watkins realizes a genuine nostalgia for our lost living world, and the American West in particular. VERDICT This debut novel (after Watkins's multiaward-winning story collection, Battleborn) follows a recent spate of similarly disturbing ecodystopias. Yet, with its damaged and complicated heroine and multiple voices, shifting perspectives, and unconventional narrative devices, it is a wholly original work. [See Prepub Alert, 4/13/15.]--Lauren Gilbert, Sachem P.L., Holbrook, NY
Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from August 1, 2015
In a not-too-distant future, the nation is in the grip of an ecological disaster. Plagued by severe water shortages, the residents of California (already dwindling in number) are subjected to a forced evacuation. Luz, a former model who spent her childhood as the government's poster child for the oncoming crisis, is hiding out in a starlet's abandoned mansion in Laurel Canyon with her competent companion Ray, who has recently gone AWOL from the U.S. military. After rescuing, or possibly kidnapping, a neglected toddler from a criminal gang, they attempt to flee the lawless frontier for what they hope will be greener pastures inland. When their plans fall apart, Luz comes under the sway of the charismatic leader of an outpost in the desert, who, like many so-called prophets, might not be what he seems. In her powerful depictions of the scorched and merciless landscape, Watkins realizes a genuine nostalgia for our lost living world, and the American West in particular. VERDICT This debut novel (after Watkins's multiaward-winning story collection, Battleborn) follows a recent spate of similarly disturbing ecodystopias. Yet, with its damaged and complicated heroine and multiple voices, shifting perspectives, and unconventional narrative devices, it is a wholly original work. [See Prepub Alert, 4/13/15.]--Lauren Gilbert, Sachem P.L., Holbrook, NY
Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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May 1, 2015
Watkins's debut story collection, Battleborn, won her the 2013 Story Prize, the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award, a National Book Award Best 5 Under 35 salute, and more. Her debut novel is set in a near-future Southern California so dried out that the resident "Mojavs" have mostly allowed themselves to be evacuated to internment camps--they're forbidden from freely seeking out greener pastures. Luz and Ray, resisters who squat in a starlet's crumbing mansion, find their love flourishing as they scrounge what they can and eventually adopt a mysterious child. But they're being tracked by a threatening cult leader and his flock. With a 50,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
