The Antidote

A Novel

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove Karen Russell: a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town

“Achingly gorgeous. . . . Karen Russell is one of our most humane and generous writers; this book is as profound as it is wonderfully strange.” —Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds

The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch,” whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.

Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.

the dustbowl

enjoyed learning exploring the legendary Dustbowl in Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma as well as the Indigenous people involved, effected and affected. I knew about the Industrial school in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. This novel explored the Pawnee experience

Excellent exposition of characters. The landscape included and the sensitive retelling of a painful period in American history.

Sensitive weaving of fact and fiction. The magical and the brutal reality of the connections to today’s environmental threats.

Excellent

One of the best books I’ve read in a long time. I loved this book and highly recommend it.

Extraordinary

I enjoyed her previous books but forgot just how good she is. The storyline and character development are excellent. The performance drew me in a painted an amazing picture of the time, place and people in this tale.

Great Story

Title: The Antidote
Author: Karen Russell

Set in Nebraska and the 1930s Dust Bowl, Russell assembles a unique cast of characters in this mystical story. The Antidote is a prairie witch, Antonina Rossi, whom the town folk tell their crimes and things they wish to forget. She acts as a vault that stores their memories. She takes on an apprentice, Asphodel Oletsky, a high school basketball player. Asphodel (Dell) lives with her uncle, Harp. Another key character is Cleo Allfrey, a black photographer who is on assignment to document those affected by the Dust Bowl. They all become involved as they try to survive a corrupt sheriff.

The story is narrated by the various characters as well as a scarecrow and a cat. Although mysticism is not my cup of tea, the novel is beautifully written. Russell seamlessly tells her story using multiple points of view as she examines the injustices done to the Native Americans and the problems brought on by poor farming practices.