Starred review from July 29, 2024
Campbell (Violet in Some Places) delivers a captivating near-future fantasy set one year after every white person in the United States walked in droves to the nearest body of water and drowned themselves. In the wake of “the event,” people of color emancipated themselves from debt, jobs, prison, and other forms of bondage and reshaped the country. Charlie Brunton, who left prison (the details and merits of the case against him come out later) and has a new life with a nice house in a Washington, D.C., suburb, observes, “In the absence of white people, the American identity moved forward, but with a handicap, limping under the weight of old ways and a crippled sense of self.” The plot gets underway when Charlie receives a call from his estranged 19-year-old daughter, Sidney, whose white mother drowned and who has been hiding in Wisconsin since the event. She convinces Charlie to accompany her to Alabama, where she believes some of her white relatives may be hiding out. Campbell’s depiction of their trek across an altered and occasionally nightmarish Southern landscape evokes Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and he caps the narrative with fascinating revelations about the cause of the event. This stunning allegory will spark much discussion. Agent: Byrd Leavell, UTA.