Having just finished penning my own novel about the Dust Bowl, I picked up The Antidote, not knowing it was a book about the Dust Bowl. From the first few words, I developed a severe case of writers-envy—The Antidote is simply extraordinary, and I wish I’d written it.
Russell takes two of the worst moments in American history, the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, tosses it with magical realism. The Antidote opens in a fictional Nebraska town of Uz, Nebraska, during Black Sunday, April 16, 1935, when the worst dust storm in history strikes the Midwest. The novel follows five characters, the most compelling of whom is a Prairie Witch known as “The Vault” uses an ear horn (an old-fashioned trumpet-shaped hearing aid) who acts as something of a confessor to the townspeople who leave their memories on deposit with her to be retrieved later at their will. For some reason, the dust storm “bankrupts” her, and all the stored memories vanish. Other characters include a Polish wheat farmer whose fields are the only ones that are surviving the Dust Bowl; a basketball playing girl (his niece) who becomes the Prairie Witch’s disciple; a Black New Deal photographer with a magical camera who comes to Uz to document the effects of the Dust Bowl; and a scarecrow with human sentience and memories that is stationed in the farmer’s fields.
One of the best things about this book is its thoughts about memory lost, memory regained, and the formation of new memories which is a subject I find fascinating. Russell makes sharp social commentary within the pages of this story including social justice, personal and collective memory, and who exactly tells the story of “history.” The prose is delightful with many unusual, yet haunting, turns of phrase. Loved this book!!!! Now I need to read the entirely of Russell’s backlist.
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The Antidote (Knopf, March 11, 2025) is available through:
Your local independent book store | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
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