Author: Mary Heglar
Genre: Women's Fiction
Publication Date: May 7, 2024
Publisher: Harper Muse
Rating: 💥💥💥💥💥
About the Book
In this intimate portrait of two generations, a granddaughter and a grandmother come to terms with what it means to heal when the world is on your shoulders.
The world is burning, and Corinne will do anything to put out the flames. After her brother died aboard an oil boat on the Mississippi River in 2013, Corrine awakened to the realities of climate change and its perpetrators. Now, a year later, she finds herself trapped in a lonely cycle of mourning both her brother and the very planet she stands on. She’s convinced that in order to save her future, she has to make sure that her brother’s life meant something. But in the act of honoring her brother’s spirit, she resurrects family ghosts she knows little about—ghosts her grandmother Cora knows intimately.
Cora’s ghosts have followed her from her days as a child desegregating schools in 1950s Nashville to her new life as a mother, grandmother, and teacher in Mississippi. As a child of the Civil Rights movement, she’s done her best to keep those specters away from her granddaughter. She faced those demons, she reasons to herself, so that Corinne would never know they existed. Cora knows what it feels like to carry the weight of the world—and that it can crush you.
When Corrine’s plan to stage a dramatic act of resistance peels back the scabs of her family wounds and puts her safety in jeopardy, both grandmother and granddaughter must bring their secrets into the light to find a path to healing and wholeness.
In heartfelt, lyrical prose based on her own family’s history, Mary Annaïse Heglar weaves an unforgettable story of the climate crisis, Black resistance, and the enduring power of love
My Thoughts
Have you ever gotten to the end of a superb book and shocked that it's over with? (even though its a full book and you know in your mind books have to have an ending at some point) That was me by the time I came to the end. I was surprised, because I wanted more although it's a full story. I just did not want this book to end. I absolutely loved and understood the characters and why they acted like they did, the story line and relationships were just beautiful. And it was just such a well written and heartbreaking read. I learned so much and these characters will be embedded in my mind for a good while. If I could give this book 10 stars, i would. Wonderful job.
Mary Annaïse Heglar is known for her essays that dissect and interrogate the climate crisis, drawing heavily on her personal experience as a Black woman with deep roots in the South. Her work has appeared in New York Magazine, The Nation, The Boston Globe, Vox, Rolling Stone, and other outlets. Her work has also been featured in collections like All We Can Save, The World As We Knew It, The Black Agenda, Letters to the Earth, and Not Too Late. With investigative journalist Amy Westervelt, she is also the co-creator of the now-retired Hot Take podcast and newsletter. In 2020, she was selected as the inaugural writer in residence at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and has gone on to teach at Columbia University in New York and Tulane University in New Orleans. In 2020, she received a SEAL Environmental Journalism award. She is based in New Orleans, but her heart is in Mississippi and her soul is in Birmingham.
Mary has been obsessed with the art of storytelling as long as she can remember. She began writing about the climate crisis in 2018 as a way to process her own climate grief. From there, she expanded into other modes of storytelling, including podcasting, teaching, and public speaking.
