A dazzlingly original and bleakly funny debut novel that follows one harried working mother before and after a devastating weather event, capturing the everyday wonders and infuriating indignities of mothering in a time of ecological crisis.
Thea spends her days among stubborn animals, many of which are massive or in pain, but they’re not really what’s causing her to feel overwhelmed. A vet at a midsized rural practice, she’s been called back from her maternity leave early to find herself awash in meetings, family mealtimes, farm visits, her boss’s search for legal loopholes and the constant care of her much-loved children, Eli and Lucy. Her husband would like to know what he should get his mother for her birthday, which she’s had to remind him is next week—Calm down, she tells the reader, I’m not going to have an affair. This is a woman who knows intimately what it is to tend to a small child’s fever in the small hours of the night while The Bachelor glows silently from her phone.
And then, suddenly, in the time it takes to drive home from a rare evening out, everything is upended. Nothing is constant, now, except for the ash, and Thea is left marveling at the things that change and the ones that don’t at what may very well be the end of the world.
Propulsive and poetic, Ash is a novel that burns with rage and joy at once. Remarkably lithe and multidimensional, it celebrates the small miracles that thrive even in motherhood’s darkest moments.
