The weather is turning

Author of The Displacements twists climate crisis into work of suburban horror

The Displacements brings the cost of climate change home to Mcmansions in Coral Gables, Fla. The folks in this wealthy community imagine tornadoes hit only trailer homes. In the opening pages of The Displacements, meet Luna, the world's first category 6 hurricane. Author Bruce Holsinger describes the hurricane's approach as if the storm is a dragon made of water. As this monster lingers over the south, the Dow plunges 20,000 points, chemical plants vomit toxins into the nation's water supply, the insurance market implodes and millions of Americans see their homes washed away.

The disaster The Displacements whips up is powerful enough to wipe away our naive confidence that such a disaster isn't coming for us. Holsinger introduces us to Daphne, the mother of two children and the stepmom of a disgruntled teen who recently dropped out of Stanford. Daphne is a ceramic artist, while her husband is a hotshot surgeon.

We meet this wealthy family, with its neatly contained tensions, during preparations for a gallery showing and a birthday party. But then the sky darkens. While her husband rushes to see what he can do at the hospital, Daphne grabs the kids and flees north.

“Miami has weathered dozens of hurricanes over the decades,” she thinks. “They will check into a hotel, wait out the storm, and return the day after tomorrow.” Oh, Daphne ...

She and her children are setting off on a wet version of The Grapes of Wrath, with the Joads' Hudson sedan replaced by a Honda Odyssey. (Holsinger's novel even comes with its own version of Steinbeck's intercalary chapters.) Soon, Daphne can't reach her husband! She can't find her purse!! SHE CAN'T USE HER CREDIT CARDS!!! Out of gas, out of money, out of cellphone power, the wealthy surgeon's wife and her kids are reduced to trudging along with the unwashed masses in “a climate-induced diaspora.”

If Holsinger is as subtle as a category 6 hurricane, he also twists his novel around a strange tension: While mocking the elitist response to natural disasters, he's also exploiting that elitism for dramatic effect. This is a work of suburban horror carefully engineered to scratch the anxieties of upper-middle-class white readers. As The Displacements slows down and sinks into the frustrations of life in a massive relief camp, the story recalls the Houston Astrodome after Katrina — except that here we witness what one character sardonically labels a “catastrophe of whiteness.”

What unfolds inside the camp is a microcosm divisions exacerbated by racial prejudice, illegal drugs and concealed weapons. Yet, for all its panoramic vision of our future hellscape — Hieronymus Bosch, but moist — The Displacements stays focused on the intimate details of Daphne's family life after the hurricane rips away every possible support. As befits her starring role in this meteorological melodrama, she'll discover strength she never knew she possessed. Others in her circle will be reduced to rubble.

The weather is turning.