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In the tradition of Station Eleven, Severance and The Dog Stars, a beautifully written and emotionally stirring dystopian novel about how our dreams of the future may shift as our environment changes rapidly, even as the earth continues to spin.
The year is 1873, and a bison hunter named Samson travels the Kansas plains, full of hope for his new country. The year is 1975, and an adolescent girl named Bea walks those very same plains; pregnant, mute, and raised in extreme seclusion, she lands in an institution, where a well-meaning psychiatrist struggles to decipher the pictures she draws of her past. The year is 2027 and, after a series of devastating storms, a tenacious engineer named Paul has left behind his banal suburban existence to build a floating city above the drowned streets that were once New Orleans. There with his poet daughter he rules over a society of dreamers and vagabonds who salvage vintage dresses, ferment rotgut wine out of fruit, paint murals on the ceiling of the Superdome, and try to write the story of their existence. The year is 2073, and Moon has heard only stories of the blue planet—Earth, as they once called it, now succumbed entirely to water. Now that Moon has come of age, she could become a mother if she wanted to–if only she understood what a mother is. Alone on Mars with her two alien uncles, she must decide whether to continue her family line and repopulate humanity on a new planet.
A sweeping family epic, told over seven generations, as America changes and so does its dream, Walk the Vanished Earth explores ancestry, legacy, motherhood, the trauma we inherit, and the power of connection in the face of our planet’s imminent collapse.
This is a story about the end of the world—but it is also about the beginning of something entirely new. Thoughtful, warm, and wildly prescient, this work of bright imagination promises that, no matter what the future looks like, there is always room for hope.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
May 31, 2022 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780593299340
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780593299340
- File size: 2628 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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December 1, 2021
Pushcart-nominated debuter Swan's story swirls from a buffalo hunter on a Kansas plain in 1873, to a mute teenage girl crossing the same plain in 1975, to an engineer who constructs a floating city above the submerged streets of New Orleans in 2024, to a girl named Moon on Mars in 2073, who looks down on what's now called the blue planet--once Earth, completely covered by water. Does she want to help repopulate Mars with humans? Comparisons to Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven.
Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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March 28, 2022
Swan’s ambitious but flawed debut follows a family through many generations from the plains of Kansas to the sands of Mars. In 1873, Samson, an Irish immigrant, hunts buffalo on the prairie. In 1975, his descendant, a mute, 11-year-old girl named Bea, gives birth to a son named Paul, who becomes an engineer. In 2018, Paul devises a plan to rebuild New Orleans after it’s submerged in a worldwide cataclysm. In 2027, in the Floating City Paul helped design, Paul and his poet daughter, Kay, entertain David, who dreams of mankind finding a new home on Mars. In 2073, a nomadic Martian named Moon contacts survivors on Earth and considers becoming a mother, and a section set in 2046 delves into the lineage that connects Moon to Paul’s family. Swan has limited success with the sci-fi elements; the futuristic backgrounds fail to persuade, the technology involved in the characters’ journey from Earth to Mars is glossed over, and the choppy, nonchronological narrative muddies the water. On the other hand, Moon and the other characters are created with true depth of feeling, and the consideration of motherhood as its meaning changes over time lands as just short of epic. There’s a lot to admire, but it bites off a bit too much. -
Starred review from May 15, 2022
Swan's ambitious debut spans two centuries, following one family over generations as Earth undergoes massive, catastrophic climate change. As he wanders the plains of Kansas in the late-nineteenth century, rugged hunter Samson has no way of knowing that in two centuries, one of his descendants will be the first girl born on Mars. Christened Moon by her doomed mother and raised by two otherworldly beings she knows as the Uncles, this girl will discover her family history and ponder whether she will take on the burden of carrying forward the family line and her very species. In between, the Samson descendants watch the world change as rising waters submerge much of the U.S. In the twenty-first century, diminutive Paul, who loses both his legs in a car accident, takes his daughter, Kay, to New Orleans, where he builds a floating city in the hopes of finding a way for the human race to survive in this flooded world, until a traveler urges him to look towards the stars for humanity's future. Grand in scope and jumping around in time, Swan's first novel offers a unique multigenerational saga against the backdrop of our changing planet.COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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