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"A groundbreaking, deeply affecting work of environmental literary suspense for fans of Cloud Atlas, The Overstory, and Station Eleven. The northern Alberta mining town of River Meadows is one of three hotspots in the world producing ghost ore, a new source of energy. The ore is worth twenty-eight times its weight in gold, but it's also linked with slippages of time and space that gradually render the area uninhabitable. After the town is evacuated, the whole region is cordoned off in an attempt to contain the deadly phenomena, with the no-go zone behind its high fences soon wryly nicknamed "the Park." From an ancient almanac to a flock of chatty birds, a cacophony of voices rise together throughout history to tell this story--but at its heart are four young gamechangers, linked through River Meadows, whose impact extends long beyond their lifetimes. After Ben Hewitt was killed in a mining accident, his widow and his two children, Alex and Amery, were among the first to be shipped out of town. Now an accomplished game designer, Alex has moved on from the disaster, but his sister hasn't. As a little girl, Amery tried to rescue the local wildlife from the effects of the ore; as an adult she's begun making increasingly dangerous break-ins into the toxic wasteland to save animals trapped there. When she fails to return from a trip inside the fence, Alex has no choice but to return to River Meadows to search for her, enlisting her friend and fellow activist, Michio Amano, a mathematician who must transcend the known laws of physics if he and Alex are to find her. Then there's Claire Foley, who fled River Meadows as a teenager and never looked back, and who now traffics in endangered wildlife under the cover of working for a travel publisher. As Alex and Michio search for Amery, Claire arrives at a legendary island nation for what should be a routine job--but when she meets the very last of an endangered crane species, she must make the choice of her life. As sweeping in scope as a world of its own, The Book of Rain upends the very constraints of form, language, and imagination, illuminating the infinite wisdom of nature and the reverberations of our flawed stewardship in this Epic of Gilgamesh for our times."-- |
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