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It took me an unusually long time to read this book—there were other urgent matters in my life that unfortunately competed with the urgent matters in this book (but I would have rather been hunkered down reading). Ironically, we had a bit of flood and water damage to our house, right as I am reading this book that largely takes place in untamed waters on a leaky boat!

The story here was geographically massive in scope---in that Enger covers a lot of earth, as well as the inland sea of the Great Lakes, and the Canadian Slate Islands. Nothing is inert or stagnant, the movement in this journey is formidable. The sea is rollicking and wild, tearing up rocks, the winds tossing it even more, and the near-future dystopian-esque land and life has been drained by climate change. In this future epoch is an inexorable, credible vision of life and death. The main characters are Rainy (a bass guitarist in a band and all-around great husband) and his wife, Lark—a bookstore owner in the midst of an era when people no longer read—only the “ancients� open books. She is also a masterfully skilled sailor.

Rainy and Lark live happily in (fictional) Icebridge, Michigan, and then a young dude stranger shows up with car troubles and other troubles, including a nitrous oxide habit. Events unfold and danger lurks, a villain is referred to, and the reader is aware that things are about to get real for the couple, and their new friend brought trouble with him, however inadvertently. Best of all is this inscrutable author—Lark’s favorite—named Molly Thorn, whose work Lark adores. She is trying to obtain all her books—there’s a whole myth surrounding Molly, not the least of which, is she dead or alive? Does it matter?

No spoilers here, so I will just dance around the plot so I don’t spoil anyone’s discovery. Rainy is about to go on a journey worthy of Orpheus. From Lark, he learned how to sail, and even gained some advanced knowledge, and he was a quick study. Enger thoroughly saturates us into the inland sea, the Great Lakes region, lots and lots of boat v water, too! The setting itself is a character; I’ve never felt such an unremitting sea that delivers like a determined antagonist, pushing up against a relentless protagonist in a way that makes the sea almost human and Rainy practically a human halyard.

It's the near future, but I suspect that Enger purposely refrained from giving an actual time period. 25 years from now? 50? It’s hard to say, but it feels immanent and authentic, an era that can’t be forestalled indefinitely, and has come with more warnings. The class system is worse than it is now, with the rich folks living on the east or west coast. Reading is done by “ancients� and there are odd weather hazards/storms we’ve yet to experience in our lifetime—like bursts or microbursts, and other hair-raising incidents that I don’t want to give away.

New times bring more alarming medicines and treatments, including “Compliance� meds that compel the user to comply with societal “norms.� Aggressive meds, also--a cache of them is worth a pirate’s plunder. You can purchase a modern-day hemlock drug, which removes you from this life to whatever is next (they don’t call it straight-up death) and allows you to spend your final hours in an elated mood, and then you quietly, painlessly stop breathing in this life--and these drugs are worth a lot of money, and is run by a dangerous man and his crew. People seeking this drug believe that we move onto another type of existence, not permanent erasure.

Rainy’s adventures while sailing the boat are many and detailed with both menace and beauty. It won’t take long before the reader feels waterlogged, in a way that sluices you into the story. I felt Enger’s characters right at my heels, or my shoulder, and in my heart.

“Earlier I’d begun to imagine the lake on my side, a protective demigod, the queen herself, adorned with thunder, stepping between me and those who’d have my skin. So much for all that. Deceived is what I felt� Superior had forgot that she was a lake at all—no, she was like her sister the North Atlantic and her cousins the hurricanes who pull down houses and urge barns into the sea.�