First published 2025
Evie stands in the wreckage of New York City as the final evictions sweep through. Her parents are dead. Her sister Elena was taken to a psychiatric commune in Colorado. The city crumbles around her as bedbugs swarm and vultures circle overhead. Landlords rule over the ruins while everyone else gets thrown out. Evie has nothing left except a memory of a second cousin in Gulluck, Texas. She heads into the unknown toward this strange town where albino cicadas chirp and mysterious gardeners tend impossible plots. Cobblers work alongside thieves, and somewhere a very large fish swims through the surreal landscape. The town operates by its own logic, perhaps even by miracles. Evie searches for what she lost when the world ended around her. She needs more than shelter. She needs home.
Genres: fiction, dystopia, literary-fiction, speculative-fiction, magical-realism
Vibes: atmospheric, haunting, introspective, lyrical, melancholic, surreal
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family, journey-of-self-discovery, magical-realism
Setting: New York City, Colorado, Gulluck, Texas
Period: 21st-century
320 pages · Hardcover · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Content warnings: death, mental-illness