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Published Oct 2021
384 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Publication Information
From the author of Road Out of Winter, winner of the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award, comes a resonant, visionary novel about the power of art and the sacrifices we are willing to make for the ones we love.
A few generations from now, the coastlines of the continent have been redrawn by floods and tides. Global powers have agreed to not produce any new plastics, and what is left has become valuable: garbage is currency.
In the region-wide junkyard that Appalachia has become, Coral is a "plucker," pulling plastic from the rivers and woods. She's stuck in Trashlands, a dump named for the strip club at its edge, where the local women dance for an endless loop of strangers and the club's violent owner rules as unofficial mayor.
Amid the polluted landscape, Coral works desperately to save up enough to rescue her child from the recycling factories, where he is forced to work. In her stolen free hours, she does something that seems impossible in this place: Coral makes art.
When a reporter from a struggling city on the coast arrives in Trashlands, Coral is presented with an opportunity to change her life. But is it possible to choose a future for herself?
Told in shifting perspectives, Trashlands is a beautifully drawn and wildly imaginative tale of a parent's journey, a story of community and humanity in a changed world.
"[A] searing exploration of the lives of women who are mired in grinding poverty in a climate-ravaged near-future where plastic has become humanity's only currency...This painful, thought-provoking apocalypse noir fires on all cylinders." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Stine has once again written a thought-provoking, harrowing feminist tale that is a natural extension of our current climate crisis. Beyond the prescient plot, Stine's characters shine with rich interior lives. Like Coral and her art, the characters create love, small comforts, and joy amidst their grueling day-to-day existences. Highly recommended for all fiction collections." – Booklist (starred review)
"Coincidental meetings, a random act of violence, and unresolved plot points make the ending less satisfying than the rest of Stine's engrossing story. A nicely balanced blend of dystopian tragedy, love, and hope." - Kirkus Reviews
"Stine's writing is clear, unadorned, and honest yet electrifying, much like her characters, and the story is a pleasure to read…Captivating." - New York Journal of Books
"Absolutely incredible…a real journey." – Tor.com
"Stine has once again written a thought-provoking, harrowing feminist tale that is a natural extension of our current climate crisis. Beyond the prescient plot, Stine's characters shine with rich igame and Trashlands is a literary page-turner—fiction at its finest." - Bryan Bliss, National Book Award longlist author of We'll Fly Away
"Alison Stine's visionary novel Trashlands is beautiful and painful at once, much like the devastating world of the future that she sees to the page here. I was left in awe of her imagination and deeply moved by her brave and unforgettable characters." - Nova Ren Suma, bestselling author of The Walls Around Us
"I felt every single word of this prescient novel deep in my blood. Inventive, expansive, and wild at heart, Trashlands proves that a mother's love will outlast all else, even the earth's ruin. Alison Stine writes like no other—with trademark ferocity and covert warmth as her characters make miracles out of what the rest of the world threw away. Stunning, through and through." - Amy Jo Burns, author of Shiner
This information about Trashlands was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Alison Stine grew up in rural Ohio and now lives in Colorado. Her first novel, Road Out of Winter, won the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award. Recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and National Geographic, she has been published in the New York Times, the Atlantic, and elsewhere.
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