FINALIST FOR THE DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE
Set in the near future, this hopeful story of survival and resilience follows Wanda—a luminous child born out of a devastating hurricane—as she navigates a rapidly changing world: A “symphony of beauty and heartbreak” (Associated Press).
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A Good Morning America Book Club pick · #1 Indie Next pick · LibraryReads pick · Book of the Month Club selection · Marie Claire #ReadWithMC book club selection · 2022 NPR “Book We Love” · New York Times Editors’ Choice
Florida is slipping away. As devastating weather patterns and rising sea levels wreak gradual havoc on the state’s infrastructure, a powerful hurricane approaches a small town on the southeastern coast. Kirby Lowe, an electrical line worker, his pregnant wife, Frida, and their two sons, Flip and Lucas, prepare for the worst. When the boys go missing just before the hurricane hits, Kirby heads out into the high winds in search of his children. Left alone, Frida goes into premature labor and gives birth to an unusual child, Wanda, whom she names after the catastrophic storm that ushers her into a society closer to collapse than ever before.
As Florida continues to unravel, Wanda grows. Moving from childhood to adulthood, adapting not only to the changing landscape, but also to the people who stayed behind in a place abandoned by civilization, Wanda loses family, gains community, and ultimately, seeks adventure, love, and purpose in a place remade by nature.
Told in four parts—power, water, light, and time—The Light Pirate mirrors the rhythms of the elements and the sometimes quick, sometimes slow dissolution of the world as we know it. It is a meditation on the changes we would rather not see, the future we would rather not greet, and a call back to the beauty and violence of an untamable wilderness.
Includes a Reading Group Guide.
Genre: Thriller
Set in the near future, this hopeful story of survival and resilience follows Wanda—a luminous child born out of a devastating hurricane—as she navigates a rapidly changing world: A “symphony of beauty and heartbreak” (Associated Press).
USA TODAY BESTSELLER!
A Good Morning America Book Club pick · #1 Indie Next pick · LibraryReads pick · Book of the Month Club selection · Marie Claire #ReadWithMC book club selection · 2022 NPR “Book We Love” · New York Times Editors’ Choice
Florida is slipping away. As devastating weather patterns and rising sea levels wreak gradual havoc on the state’s infrastructure, a powerful hurricane approaches a small town on the southeastern coast. Kirby Lowe, an electrical line worker, his pregnant wife, Frida, and their two sons, Flip and Lucas, prepare for the worst. When the boys go missing just before the hurricane hits, Kirby heads out into the high winds in search of his children. Left alone, Frida goes into premature labor and gives birth to an unusual child, Wanda, whom she names after the catastrophic storm that ushers her into a society closer to collapse than ever before.
As Florida continues to unravel, Wanda grows. Moving from childhood to adulthood, adapting not only to the changing landscape, but also to the people who stayed behind in a place abandoned by civilization, Wanda loses family, gains community, and ultimately, seeks adventure, love, and purpose in a place remade by nature.
Told in four parts—power, water, light, and time—The Light Pirate mirrors the rhythms of the elements and the sometimes quick, sometimes slow dissolution of the world as we know it. It is a meditation on the changes we would rather not see, the future we would rather not greet, and a call back to the beauty and violence of an untamable wilderness.
Includes a Reading Group Guide.
Genre: Thriller
Praise for this book
"This is one of the most daring, deeply imagined and moving novels I have read. The writer asks us to consider a near-apocalyptic future, but, in prose that is beautiful and precise, Brooks-Dalton offers us hope that we are capable of remaking this world as a gentler and more generous-hearted place. Readers will not forget this beautiful book." - Meredith Hall
"Lily Brooks-Dalton is wonderful, fresh on the scene with a big heart, a fierce spirit, a writer's eye, and a lovely sense of humor." - Anne Lamott
"I read this book in a whirlwind, voracious as the hurricanes at its heart. Lily Brooks-Dalton writes with the kind of intricate sensitivity that leaves one grateful to be - faultily, flimsily, adaptably, temporarily - human. Harrowing, tender, and urgent, The Light Pirate is a novel of global scope and exquisite intimacy." - Rachel Lyon
"Lily Brooks-Dalton is an audacious, exquisite writer whose work pulses with humanity and hope. In The Light Pirate, her mesmerizing new novel, Brooks-Dalton achieves the impossible: she leaves us feeling grateful to be alive even as she describes, with pinpoint precision, the end of the world as we know it. Gripping, poetic, and wholly original, this book changed how I see the future. I'll never forget it." - Jillian Medoff
"This is fiction of rare and riveting achievement: it is equal parts prophecy, elegy, and revelation. The Light Pirate describes a world much like ours, one of rising seas and changing coastlines, and peers around the corner into the future to show us what awaits. How will human beings endure such loss? How will we mourn, and how will we persist? Lily Brooks-Dalton has captured the fragile beauty of our world, and our lives, with a tenderness that is both moving and galvanizing." - Anna Pitoniak
"Lily Brooks-Dalton is an uncanny chronicler of desolate spaces, whether it's the cold expanse of the universe or the deepest recesses of the human heart." - Colson Whitehead
"Lily Brooks-Dalton is wonderful, fresh on the scene with a big heart, a fierce spirit, a writer's eye, and a lovely sense of humor." - Anne Lamott
"I read this book in a whirlwind, voracious as the hurricanes at its heart. Lily Brooks-Dalton writes with the kind of intricate sensitivity that leaves one grateful to be - faultily, flimsily, adaptably, temporarily - human. Harrowing, tender, and urgent, The Light Pirate is a novel of global scope and exquisite intimacy." - Rachel Lyon
"Lily Brooks-Dalton is an audacious, exquisite writer whose work pulses with humanity and hope. In The Light Pirate, her mesmerizing new novel, Brooks-Dalton achieves the impossible: she leaves us feeling grateful to be alive even as she describes, with pinpoint precision, the end of the world as we know it. Gripping, poetic, and wholly original, this book changed how I see the future. I'll never forget it." - Jillian Medoff
"This is fiction of rare and riveting achievement: it is equal parts prophecy, elegy, and revelation. The Light Pirate describes a world much like ours, one of rising seas and changing coastlines, and peers around the corner into the future to show us what awaits. How will human beings endure such loss? How will we mourn, and how will we persist? Lily Brooks-Dalton has captured the fragile beauty of our world, and our lives, with a tenderness that is both moving and galvanizing." - Anna Pitoniak
"Lily Brooks-Dalton is an uncanny chronicler of desolate spaces, whether it's the cold expanse of the universe or the deepest recesses of the human heart." - Colson Whitehead
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