by T. C. Boyle
From the award–winning author of The Tortilla Curtain comes an "entertaining and informative" (Chicago Tribune) novel about global warming and ecological collapse.
It is the year 2025. Global warming is a reality. The biosphere has collapsed, and most mammals—not to mention fish, birds, and frogs—are extinct. Tyrone Tierwater is eking out a bleak living in southern California, managing a pop star's private menagerie that "only a mother could love"—scruffy hyenas, jackals, warthogs, and three down-at-the-mouth lions.
It wasn't always like this for Ty. Once he was a passionate environmentalist, so committed to saving the earth that he became an eco-terrorist and, ultimately, a convicted felon. As a member of the radical group Earth Forever!, he unwittingly endangered both his daughter, Sierra, and his wife, Andrea. Now, just when he's trying to survive in a world torn by obdurate storms and winnowing drought, Andrea comes back into his life.
Blending idealism and satire, A Friend of the Earth addresses the ultimate questions of human love and the survival of the species.
"As disaster tales go, this is a sly, hip one... . Boyle has always liked to play circus barker for life's extremes and what better freak show than the environmental apocalypse itself?" —The Washington Post
"Both entertaining and informative ... hits like a warning shot from twenty-five years into the future." —Chicago Tribune
"A Friend of the Earth is about people and nature coming to terms with each other. In many ways it is a far more convincing argument for sustainable living in nature than any nonfiction environmental tract." —San Francisco Chronicle
This information about A Friend of the Earth 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.
T. C. Boyle is a novelist and regular contributor to The New Yorker. His novels include World's End and The Tortilla Curtain, and he has also published numerous collections of short stories. A Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Southern California, he lives in Santa Barbara.

If you liked A Friend of the Earth, try these:
The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue
by Mike Tidwell
Published 2025
A riveting and elegant story of climate change on one city street, full of surprises and true stories of human struggle and dying local trees – all against the national backdrop of 2023's record heat domes and raging wildfires and, simultaneously, rising hopes for clean energy.
by David Lipsky
Published 2024
The New York Times best-selling author explores how "anti-science" became so virulent in American life—through a history of climate denial and its consequences.
by Annalee Newitz
Published 2023
From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration of the future.
I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now only that place where the books are ...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.