Children think we make them, but we don’t … They come into the world and make us. They make us by breaking us first. ‘Utterly gripping’ Karin Slaughter ‘Impossible to put down’ Booklist ‘Undeniable, brilliantly written’ Theodore Wheeler ‘Thrilling’ Lydia KangThe world is mostly water when Pearl is born. The floods have left America a cluster of small islands with roving trade ships and raiders.Pearl knows little of her father Jacob and elder sister Row, who left her mother Myra when she was pregnant with her. Between them they make do, with Myra fishing and trading to make ends meet, travelling from island to island on Bird, the boat Myra’s grandfather made before he died.Whilst their life is a tranquil one, Myra still aches for the daughter she once lost. When a chance encounter reveals that Row might still be alive, Myra packs up six-year-old Pearl and together they begin a dangerous voyage to The Valley, where rumours of violence and breeding ships run rampant.Along the way they encounter death and strangers, finally finding solace on board Sedna – full to the brim with supplies and an able crew – where Myra feels like she might be closer to finding Row than she has ever been. But to get to Row she will have to deceive everyone around her, betraying the trust of those she’s come to love, and ask herself if she’s willing to sacrifice everything and everyone for what might be nothing at all.
An unforgettable, inventive, and riveting epic saga with the literary force and evocative imagination of Station Eleven, Zone One, and The Road, that signals the arrival of an extraordinary new talent.After years of slowly overtaking the continent, starting with the great coastal cities, rising floodwaters have left America an archipelago of mountaintop colonies surrounded by a deep expanse of open water. Civilization as it once was is gone. Bands of pirates roam the waters, in search of goods and women to breed. Some join together to create a new kind of society, while others sail alone, barely surviving.Myra and her precocious and feisty eight-year-old daughter, Pearl, fish from their small boat, the Bird, visiting small hamlets and towns on dry land only to trade for supplies and information. Just before Pearl’s birth, when the monstrous deluge overtook their home in Nebraska, Maya’s oldest daughter, Row, was stolen by her father.For eight years Myra has searched for the girl that she knows, in her bones and her heart, still lives. In a violent confrontation with a stranger, Myra discovers that Row was last seen in a far-off encampment of raiders on the coast of what used to be Greenland. Throwing aside her usual caution, she and Pearl embark on a perilous voyage into the icy northern seas to rescue the girl, now thirteen.On the journey, Myra and Pearl join forces with a larger ship, a band of Americans like them. In a desperate act of deceit and manipulation, Myra convinces the crew to sail north. Though she hides her true motivations, Myra finds herself bonding with her fellow seekers, men, women, and children who hope to build a safe haven together in this dangerous new world.But secrets, lust, and betrayals threaten to capsize their dream, and after their fortunes take a shocking – and blood – turn, Myra can no longer ignore the question of whether saving Row is worth endangering Pearl and her fellow travelers.A compulsively readable novel of dark despair and soaring hope, After the Flood is a magnificent, action-packed, and sometimes frightening odyssey laced with wonder – an affecting and wholly original saga both redemptive and astonishing.