SYMBOLIC DISASTER DEBUT NOVEL

Nancy Wayson Dinan Loot.co.za (R548) BLOOMSBURY

Things You Would

Know if You Grew Up Around Here in the fiction section, but this debut novel from a doctoral candidate in fiction writing at Texas Tech is something more than that.

An imagined story, sure, but it all takes place during a real-world event – the Memorial Day floods of 2015 in westcentral Texas.

There’s more than a little of Salman Rushdie’s magical realism at play, as ghosts wander through the mist, scarecrows walk and vines reclaim the landscape.

The main character is 18-year-old Boyd Montgomery, who is described “like the forked stick of a dowser, positioned over dry earth, tuned not to water, but to pain”. Home-schooled since seventhgrade, when her empathetic burden became too much to bear, Boyd is most at ease in nature.

Her best friend is a teacher’s son named Isaac. They aren’t a couple, having slept together only once and reluctant to discuss a future together, but there is a palpable attraction. He’s the only person she’s never been able to “feel”. She’s at peace around him.

On the day the drought ends and the rivers explode from their beds, Isaac gets a call from his father, Ruben, a teacher who has always been intrigued by tales of a buried treasure in San Saba County. He sets off to meet his dad, not knowing the roaring waters are too high in places for a car to pass.

Isaac’s disappearance sets the rest of the plot in motion as Boyd goes looking for him, and Boyd’s mother, father, aunt and neighbour go looking for her.

People from the past appear, mostly to Boyd, as she navigates the suddenly apocalyptic world.

You’ll have to decide for yourself what purpose they serve and whether the novel’s conclusion feels earned. But it’s a journey worth taking as Dinan offers readers a reminder that what happened in Texas is just one small piece of the climate disasters to come. |