After the Flood - Kassandra Montag

“I had waited so long to prove myself wrong. To prove that I have room in me for everything I’ve lost and will lose, that the room in my heart will grow with loss and not contract. And I hadn’t just found it to be true; I’d made it true. I am not the shards of a broken glass, but the water let loose from it. The uncontainable thing that will not shatter and stay broken.” Kassandra Montag has written a 1st person, novel that takes place years after both the 100 year flood and the 6 year flood that followed it in its wake. While the state of the planet and the lack of land is important to the story, the main character does not discuss what caused it in detail, only guessing and relating what she’d heard over time; she doesn’t ponder the why, only the fact that it is. It is not the story of a world nearly underwater; it is a story of a women who has lost her entire family except for the child that she gave birth to after the flood had caused her to take to the water in a boat. It is the story of a mother that doesn’t give up searching for the child that her husband abducted from her months before the newest baby’s arrival. It is a story of introspection, what a mother would be willing to sacrifice if there was even a small chance to save her child, even if it meant putting her other child at risk. Other characters lend their stories, their losses, their struggles as they all look for a way to survive, to figure out how to live in this new world. Man’s inhumanity to man plays its role in this new world, highlighting to what degree people can excuse their own darkness when it comes to survival. The trading posts, the barter commerce, the groups that are taking over the seas and the colonies by force are all discussed and acknowledged by the main character, much as a mother would discuss the world today or her neighborhood: these are the realities she must face or avoid in order to keep her children safe. “I had feared losing them, but there were moments that desire lurked tight at the edge of that fear. Set loose form them, I could give up, I told myself. I could stop away into the water, no longer fighting, no longer pretending to be strong.” Thank you to the publisher and Edelweiss for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.