The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton

Genre: Science Fiction
Length: 320 pages
First Published: 2022

Rachael’s Review

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Grand Central Publishing through Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

In a Florida already wracked by climate change, Frida gives birth to baby Wanda amid a deadly hurricane. As the world continues to disintegrate, Wanda grows and adapts to an ever-changing world. Living in a community abandoned by society, Wanda seeks adventure, community, and love in a place remade by nature.

You would expect nothing less than gorgeous writing from Lilly Brooks-Dalton, author of Good Morning, Midnight. Her lyrical prose gives an added force to climate fiction, painting the end of the world with such beauty you can’t look away. The Light Pirate starts with a compelling section about the hurricane surrounding Wanda’s birth, and you are immediately drawn into the family’s struggles. As Wanda grows, you are drawing in as the world that we know vanishes, replaced by a wild future.

Publisher’s Description

For readers of Station Eleven and Where the Crawdads Sing comes a hopeful, sweeping story of survival and resilience spanning one extraordinary woman’s lifetime as she navigates the uncertainty, brutality, and arresting beauty of a rapidly changing world.

Florida is slipping away. As devastating weather patterns and rising sea levels wreak gradual havoc on the state’s infrastructure, a powerful hurricane approaches a small town on the southeastern coast. Kirby Lowe, an electrical line worker, his pregnant wife, Frida, and their two sons, Flip and Lucas, prepare for the worst. When the boys go missing just before the hurricane hits, Kirby heads out into the high winds in search of his children. Left alone, Frida goes into premature labor and gives birth to an unusual child, Wanda, whom she names after the catastrophic storm that ushers her into a society closer to collapse than ever before.

As Florida continues to unravel, Wanda grows. Moving from childhood to adulthood, adapting not only to the changing landscape, but also to the people who stayed behind in a place abandoned by civilization, Wanda loses family, gains community, and ultimately, seeks adventure, love, and purpose in a place remade by nature.

Told in four parts—power, water, light, and time—The Light Pirate mirrors the rhythms of the elements and the sometimes quick, sometimes slow dissolution of the world as we know it. It is a meditation on the changes we would rather not see, the future we would rather not greet, and a call back to the beauty and violence of an untamable wilderness.