Book Review: "After the Flood" by Kassandra Montag

"When I think of those days, of losing the people I've loved, I think of how my loneliness deepened, like being lowered into a well, water rising around me as I clawed at the stone walls, reaching for sunlight. How you get used to being at the bottom of a well. How you wouldn't recognize a rope if it was thrown down to you."

This book was utterly amazing. Beautifully written, bleak, tremendously poignant, and full of lyrical imagery and memorable characters, it is hard to believe that After the Flood is Kassandra Montag's debut novel. But the more you read, the more you become fully immersed in this story you realize that debut novel or not, this is one of those books you'll think about and talk about for years to come.

Just over a century from now, our world has been taken over by massive flooding which obliterated much of the landscape, leaving only mountains and random pieces of land scattered through our world, with whole cities left underwater. Myra and her young daughter Pearl live off their small boat, fishing and salvaging to make ends meet, finding people to trade with in the few outposts that are left. It's a bleak existence and Myra always exercises an abundance of caution, because the floods left many lawless people in their wake.

For seven years, Myra has mourned her older daughter, Row, every single day. Row was taken from Myra by her husband just before a massive flood hit their home in Nebraska. Myra had wanted to wait until her grandfather finished building the boat they would use to keep them safe; Myra's husband was afraid and impatient, so he took Row and never came back. Myra knows the chances that Row is still alive are very slim, and she should just focus all of her energy on keeping Pearl safe and happy, but she can't stop dreaming of the moment when she might have both of her girls together for the first time.

"The world will break you, but it's when you break yourself that you feel you really can't heal."

When Myra hears that Row (or at least someone resembling her) was spotted recently at a settlement near Greenland, she is desperate to risk everything to bring about a potential reunion with her daughter. She connects with Daniel, a troubled yet kind man with secrets and regrets of his own, and then they have to find another ship on which to make the perilous journey. When they meet Abran and his crew, she knows she has to hide her real reasons for wanting to travel so far, but she has no choice but to deceive them in order to rescue her daughter.

But there is no guarantee the ship will make it all the way there, because along the way they must battle the elements, bands of raiders bent on revenge for earlier slights, and the uncertainty of whom among them should be trusted. What will they find when they arrive at this colony? Will there be disease, killers, a lack of resources, or, perhaps worst of all, no trace of humanity?

After the Flood certainly is bleak and I kept waiting for things to completely fall apart, yet there certainly is an element of hope in the book as well—hope that Myra will be able to find Row, hope that the ship will make it where it needs to go relatively unscathed, hope that they can perhaps build a new community when they arrive. I honestly couldn't get enough of this story.

This reminded me a lot of Cormac McCarthy's The Road in its exquisite telling of how far a parent would go for their children, but Montag's imagery, her language, and her weaving of present and past made the story unique at the same time. The pacing may seem a little slow at times but it worked well for me.

Simply put, this book is worth all the hype it will get. I won't be able to put it out of my mind anytime soon.