From the Caves (Paperback)
Staff Reviews
A fantastic novella of literary merit about a small family living in a cave after the climate apocalypse. Told in language that sings from the point of view of Sky, the youngest member who learns that responsibility is as necessary as the stories they tell each other to survive. The book is dark and bleak at times, but the fresh and lyrical language and the wildness of the hot and desolate future world really keep you turning pages. Picture Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but told from the child's point of view. A necessary tale to think about the effects of climate change and how language and stories may be the key to our survival.
— Sam*WINNER of the 2021 Foreword Indie Book Award in Literature*
Environmental catastrophe has driven four people inside the dark throat of a cave: Sky, a child coming of age; Tie, pregnant and grieving; Mark, a young man poised to assume primacy; and Teller, an elder, holder of stories. As the devastating heat of summer grows, so does the poison in Teller's injured leg and the danger of Tie's imminent labor, food and water dwindling while the future becomes increasingly dependent on the words Sky gleans from the dead, stories pieced together from recycled knowledge, fragmented histories, and half-buried creation myths. From the Caves presents the past, present, and future in tandem, reshaping ancient and modern ideas of death and motherhood, grief and hope, endings and beginnings.