The Light Pirate: GMA Book Club Selection
For readers of Station Eleven and Where the Crawdads Sing comes a hopeful, sweeping story of survival and resilience spanning one extraordinary woman's lifetime as she navigates the uncertainty, brutality, and arresting beauty of a rapidly changing world.Florida is slipping away. As devastating weather patterns and rising sea levels wreak gradual havoc on the state's infrastructure, a powerful hurricane approaches a small town on the southeastern coast. Kirby Lowe, an electrical line worker, his pregnant wife, Frida, and their two sons, Flip and Lucas, prepare for the worst. When the boys go missing just before the hurricane hits, Kirby heads out into the high winds in search of his children. Left alone, Frida goes into premature labor and gives birth to an unusual child, Wanda, whom she names after the catastrophic storm that ushers her into a society closer to collapse than ever before.As Florida continues to unravel, Wanda grows. Moving from childhood to adulthood, adapting not only to the changing landscape, but also to the people who stayed behind in a place abandoned by civilization, Wanda loses family, gains community, and ultimately, seeks adventure, love, and purpose in a place remade by nature.Told in four parts--power, water, light, and time--The Light Pirate mirrors the rhythms of the elements and the sometimes quick, sometimes slow dissolution of the world as we know it. It is a meditation on the changes we would rather not see, the future we would rather not greet, and a call back to the beauty and violence of an untamable wilderness.
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Community Reviews
At first I just hated this book. I wanted to scream when Lucas convinced his little brother, Flip, to go to the nearby trailer park when they knew a hurricane was imminent. How stupid can you be? Frieda, who is pregnant, ventures out to a shed to look for her two stepsons in the midst of pouring rain. You know this is not going to end well.
Then the book flashes forward ten years and young Wanda disobeys her father’s explicit instructions and goes out to the Edge - where the water meets the ocean. Four older children surround her and she nearly drowns. Then, a mysterious light surrounds her and scares the bullies away.
As the book progresses, it gets better. Wanda’s relationship with Phyllis is warm and loving. The book describes the inevitable effects of global warming and rising oceans. However, the timeline is somewhat skewed. There is reference to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico where Frieda meets Kirby. If true, then all of this is happening about ten years from now. I do believe there will be devastating effects due to rising oceans but I found it hard to believe it will happen as quickly as described in this book. Also, there are elements of supernatural or paranormal behavior that seem unnecessary. I think the book would have been more plausible if it were set 30 years in the future.
I’d recommend “This Impossible Brightness” to others who liked this book. It always deals with rising oceans in the future and has some supernatural elements.
Then the book flashes forward ten years and young Wanda disobeys her father’s explicit instructions and goes out to the Edge - where the water meets the ocean. Four older children surround her and she nearly drowns. Then, a mysterious light surrounds her and scares the bullies away.
As the book progresses, it gets better. Wanda’s relationship with Phyllis is warm and loving. The book describes the inevitable effects of global warming and rising oceans. However, the timeline is somewhat skewed. There is reference to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico where Frieda meets Kirby. If true, then all of this is happening about ten years from now. I do believe there will be devastating effects due to rising oceans but I found it hard to believe it will happen as quickly as described in this book. Also, there are elements of supernatural or paranormal behavior that seem unnecessary. I think the book would have been more plausible if it were set 30 years in the future.
I’d recommend “This Impossible Brightness” to others who liked this book. It always deals with rising oceans in the future and has some supernatural elements.
really was not a fan of this. character felt hollow and i couldn’t connect to any of them and often didn’t understand their motives. story felt rushed and a lot of the magical elements didn’t feel like they had an end purpose.
What a gorgeously written book. Dystopian Florida given back to nature and this Wanda’s journey through it all. Raw, gripping, moving. I just have so many words I wanna use to describe this book, but I’m just in awe.
I heard about The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton on a Book Riot podcast and was thrilled when my library had it!
Florida has been cut off by the government and left to be reclaimed by Mother Nature. And no, it’s not for reasons you would think.
The Light Pirate focuses on Wanda and everyone in her orbit. Frida and Kirby, Wanda’s parents, Lucas and Flip, Wanda’s brothers, start us off at the beginning of Hurricane Wanda. Frida, scared and pregnant, wants to evacuate. Kirby, a lineman in Florida, feels prepared to handle the hurricane. Kirby is, sadly, wrong, and so many deaths later, Wanda is born prematurely right in the middle of the hurricane.
Wanda grows up with a much smaller family and is seen as “the strange girl” since she’s named after the most destructive and deadliest hurricane to hit Florida at the time. Florida is becoming nearly desolate as people keep evacuating, as storms and hurricanes keep pounding the state, as the state government is running out of money to keep up infrastructure, electricity, cell towers. Eventually, Miami is closed down and people relocated, so the rest of the Floridians see their own fate.
Wanda ends up staying with Phyllis, a survivalist, who teaches her everything she needs to know to survive the newly wild Florida. Mother Nature, climate change, the wild slowly reclaim the state. We really only focus on Florida but we find out via other characters that climate change is destroying the entire US. California is on fire, coastal states are crumbling into the ocean, sinkholes are taking back entire cities and towns.
The characters in The Light Pirate knew this would happen…some day. But none of them believed they would live to see it, until they do. Most people are ill-equipped to survive this landscape, but some, like Wanda, end up thriving. This is really such a great book (without preachiness on climate change - although, come on, this will probably be real some day) that focuses on loss and how to change and survive despite losing everything.
Florida has been cut off by the government and left to be reclaimed by Mother Nature. And no, it’s not for reasons you would think.
The Light Pirate focuses on Wanda and everyone in her orbit. Frida and Kirby, Wanda’s parents, Lucas and Flip, Wanda’s brothers, start us off at the beginning of Hurricane Wanda. Frida, scared and pregnant, wants to evacuate. Kirby, a lineman in Florida, feels prepared to handle the hurricane. Kirby is, sadly, wrong, and so many deaths later, Wanda is born prematurely right in the middle of the hurricane.
Wanda grows up with a much smaller family and is seen as “the strange girl” since she’s named after the most destructive and deadliest hurricane to hit Florida at the time. Florida is becoming nearly desolate as people keep evacuating, as storms and hurricanes keep pounding the state, as the state government is running out of money to keep up infrastructure, electricity, cell towers. Eventually, Miami is closed down and people relocated, so the rest of the Floridians see their own fate.
Wanda ends up staying with Phyllis, a survivalist, who teaches her everything she needs to know to survive the newly wild Florida. Mother Nature, climate change, the wild slowly reclaim the state. We really only focus on Florida but we find out via other characters that climate change is destroying the entire US. California is on fire, coastal states are crumbling into the ocean, sinkholes are taking back entire cities and towns.
The characters in The Light Pirate knew this would happen…some day. But none of them believed they would live to see it, until they do. Most people are ill-equipped to survive this landscape, but some, like Wanda, end up thriving. This is really such a great book (without preachiness on climate change - although, come on, this will probably be real some day) that focuses on loss and how to change and survive despite losing everything.
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