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Set over the course of one day, a heart-racing debut about a woman facing the unimaginable, determined to find safety.
Last night, you and I were safe. Last night, in another universe, your father and I stood fighting in the kitchen.
Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, there's nothing to do but walk.
Making her way across the wreckage of Portland, Annie experiences human desperation and kindness: strangers offering help, a riot at a grocery store, and an unlikely friendship with a young mother. As she walks, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, her disappointing career, and her anxiety about having a baby. If she can just make it home, she's determined to change her life.
A propulsive debut, Tilt is a primal scream of a novel about the disappointments and desires we all carry, and what each of us will do for the people we love.
LATE MORNING
IKEA, NE Portland
So here we are, thirty-seven weeks pregnant, at IKEA.
Picture me, Bean, if you can picture anything inside of there. My belly distended, a blimp exiting sideways out of my body. I walk in stiff little jerky motions like a stork. Grip on to stair railings. Every few minutes, I have to press my hands against my lower back to stop my spine from breaking in half.
I look so disturbing that I make the other shoppers nervous; they watch me from the corner of their eyes to see what I'll do next. They stop me to say things like, Bet you're ready for this to be over, or You look like you're about to pop!
And IKEA. On a weekday. Dear god. Another reminder that I'm officially unimportant. Only the old people and college students and bartenders shop for furniture on a Monday. And of course the other pregnant ladies. Milling in the crib section like hungry alligators.
I'm wearing a lavender linen romper and Birkenstocks. The kind of thing I would see pregnant women on Instagram wearing and think, Over my dead body. The kind of outfit that takes the EDGE off, that says, I am no longer into fucking, I am now a mother. Please speak to me only in high pitches. But it turns out, Bean, that maternity clothes cost just as much as real clothes. And we still haven't paid off the bill the clinic sent me for my last ultrasound. So now I wear whatever hand-me-down maternity outfit I can get on Buy Nothing or at the thrift shop. Today: the lavender romper.
I've been standing in the kids section for at least an hour, trying to decide between the different crib mattresses, because of course a crib does not come with a mattress, what was I thinking? That you were going to sleep directly on the wood? So now I'm googling the difference between a spring mattress and a foam mattress, and Google tells me that it can be worth it to spend the extra money on an organic crib mattress, because toxins cause cancer, and if you're going to get a foam mattress, make sure it's made without polyurethane, but of course IKEA does not list on their website what kind of foam their crib mattresses are made of, or if they do I can't find it, and I'm looking for somebody in a yellow shirt to help me, but they've all vanished.
Your father and I sleep on a mattress we got on Craigslist, a mattress we dragged together through the dingy hallway of a dingy apartment building in North Portland, after handing some creepy guy $80 in cash. "Queen bed for my queen," your father said when we finally managed to squeeze it into the back of our car.
It's not just our shitty mattress, Bean. It's everything. Your father, Dom, is thirty-eight, still trying to get that big role. Still standing in line to audition. Still sending his headshots to casting agents. Still picking up shifts at the cafe that he's worked at since we first met. Your mother—Annie, speaking—thought she was destined to be the next Tennessee Williams, the millennial Beckett, wasted hours practicing that big, sweeping bow she'd do under those big Broadway lights, and is now thirty-five and spends her days staring at spreadsheets on a computer screen on the twenty-second floor of a glass building, pressing buttons with her fingers. Last I checked, your father and I have $836 in a checking account at Wells Fargo, a Subaru with 160,000 miles on it, and a two-bedroom apartment by Mount Tabor we can only afford because the landlord feels too guilty to raise our rent or kick us out. And here I am, thirty-seven weeks pregnant at IKEA. On a Monday. With a credit card I'll probably die before I pay off.
What I'm trying to say is that nothing, nothing about the first year of your life, will look like the years that come after, so enjoy your toxin-free mattress while you can.
I decide on the most expensive crib. A rule of the universe, Bean: the most expensive option is always the best bet. I'm reaching for a crib sheet dotted ...
Excerpted from Tilt by Emma Pattee. Copyright © 2025 by Emma Pattee. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
Discussion Questions:
ACTIVITIES TO ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB
Emergency Preparedness Challenge
Take inspiration from the novel's survival theme and prepare a mini-survival kit. Share what items you'd include and discuss how you'd adapt to a disaster scenario in your city or town. Visit https://www.ready.gov/kit to research further and build on your discussion.
Cast your crisis team
Imagine you're in Annie's shoes at the start of the novel. Who would you want by your side? List three people you'd want as allies during a crisis and describe the emotional and practical strengths they bring, like resilience, humor, or resourcefulness. Reflect on a time when one of these individuals helped you face an unexpected challenge and how it impacted your relationship. Share your list and story with the group, discussing the traits that make someone a valuable comrade in tough times.
Journal Prompt: What is a "tilt" moment in your own life?
Invite members to write about a "tilt" moment in their lives—an event that shifted their perspective or path. Invite everyone to share how they navigated it and what they learned.
Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.
In Emma Pattee's debut novel Tilt, heavily pregnant Annie is in IKEA looking to buy a crib when a huge earthquake strikes Portland. Buildings crumble, bridges collapse, roads are ripped apart, and the city is swallowed by a cloud of dust and debris. With phone lines down and all power lost, Annie must navigate the chaos in a desperate attempt to reach her husband, who was working downtown. Her first-person account is addressed to her unborn child; as Annie narrates the journey they undertake together, the reader feels how much Annie is trying to remain calm and focused for the sake of her family.
During Annie's trek across the city, she encounters the best and worst of society. Some people rally together, offering comfort, support, and first aid to those in need; others serve only themselves, capitalizing on the chaos to loot, vandalize, and even enact violence on others. It's a context that is ripe for social critique; most significantly, Annie finds it easy to offer help to or accept it from fellow women—like Taylor, a young mother trying to reach her daughter's school, and Becky, a woman badly injured during the quake—but difficult to accept help from men. She's unable to shake her underlying suspicion, her constant awareness of the threat men can pose, even when she could use their help. In one scene, a man puts his hand on her shoulder, trying to offer genuine comfort, but Annie immediately freezes "in the way every woman's body freezes under the pressure of a man's hand." Later, she tells her baby, "You'll know this feeling one day—there's nothing a woman hates more than walking by herself, and hearing a strange noise, or feeling the presence of an 'other.'"
In such a heightened context, Annie is on high alert, constantly assessing situations with men in a way that she doesn't have to with women. The reader feels her exhaustion and frustration at this reality. When a man offers Annie a ride in his van, she tries to reassure herself that his motivations are likely innocent:
"Men aren't necessarily bad. Men are half the population. Men are sometimes willing to help others just to be kind… Every man was once a baby. This man was once a child. He probably is trying to do the right thing… Pregnant women are sacred. Nobody wants to hurt a pregnant woman. Nobody wants to rape a pregnant woman. People have mostly good intentions."
But she can't override her fear, and she doesn't accept the ride.
The chapters detailing Annie's journey alternate with flashbacks to her life prior to the earthquake, a structure that helps break up the tension of the present-day chapters and lets the reader understand more of what Annie has been going through: the grief of losing her mother; the stress of impending parenthood; her strained relationship with her husband, Dom, which has been exacerbated by Annie's pregnancy and money troubles. Annie has also been concerned about the state of society, questioning the ethical implications of bringing a child into a world blighted by inequality, economic hardship, and climate change, and feels a constant undercurrent of dread. "My whole body vibrates with the feeling that something has gone wrong or is about to," she says. "Every day I wake up with the feeling that I've heard bad news—but I can't remember what it was." Her paranoia that something terrible will happen to her child has caused further tension with Dom. "There's no way to explain to your father that some people make lists of all the ways that babies die and some people don't," she tells the baby.
Annie's anxiety about motherhood ramps up the stakes of the disaster. After the earthquake, she must face her worst fears in a very literal sense, and fight to save herself, her child, and her relationship. It's a bold metaphor, but one that never detracts from the realism of the earthquake itself. And though more could have been done to emphasize the bitter irony that Annie's anxieties about the dangers of the world were not unfounded, the immediacy of the situation does grant her a new appreciation for life—both her own, and the one growing inside her:
"My aliveness is beaming out of me, every pore shining with the fact that I'm alive. I'm so fucking alive I'm shaking. We're alive, you and me, we're alive, and that's why I'm running now, running down the trail with my Birkenstocks flopping and my great misshapen belly straining to stay upright."
Annie's story may lack closure for some readers, but as it reaches a thrilling yet abrupt climax, Tilt movingly conveys to readers the importance of carrying on despite the fear of an uncertain future.
Reviewed by Callum McLaughlin
Angie Kim, New York Times bestselling author of Happiness Falls and Miracle Creek
Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State and Mobility
Rated 5 out of 5
by Jill
Literary Thriller Debut
Tilt by Emma Pattee
A pregnant overwhelmed woman’s epic journey across a ravaged city with the weight of her past and her hopes for the future.
Narration by Ariel Blake was very well done for this rapid paced literary thriller debut. An impressive read set over the course of a day, in Portland, Oregon, where a massive earthquake has rocked the city. Annie, nine months pregnant, out shopping, must now try and survive and protect her little “bean” trying to get back home to her husband. Annie encounters the human desperation and kindness of others; reflecting on her marriage, career, the anxieties of becoming a mother, and how to pursue your dreams and deal with your disappointments.
I thought this was written beautifully and I was impressed by this dynamic debut. For a 240 page novel, it has a powerful impact. I’m eagerly awaiting her next book already.
Rated 5 out of 5
by BonnieMG
A wild dystopic but all too real ride
Pattee's novel is one of those read straight through in one sitting book. Actually, this book is one of those where you have to physically restrain yourself from reading the last few pages to find out what happens! Tilt tells the store of one day in the life of Annie, who is 37 weeks pregnant and at IKEA alone buying a crib when a massive earthquake hits Oregon.
As Annie tries to walk home through the destruction to get back her partner, her interior monologue is a frantic, ripped from the headlines searing indictment of climate change, the staggering cost of American healthcare and dental care, the pregnancy industrial complex, urban real estate prices, and the futility of making art in a broken world. In a taut 240 pages Pattee accomplishes so much. What a debut! What a voice!
Emma Pattee's debut novel Tilt follows one woman's journey across Portland after the city is hit by a devastating earthquake. Though fictional, the disaster is based on research that suggests such an event could take place in the not-so-distant future. Readers may recognize this future earthquake as "The Big One" from Kathryn Schulz's panic-inducing 2015 New Yorker article.
Portland sits on or near several fault lines, where seismic activity beneath the earth can trigger earthquakes. The most significant of these is the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a 700-mile fault off the Pacific coast that stretches from northern California to British Columbia. Here, two tectonic plates meet, with the Juan de Fuca Plate gradually shifting beneath the North American Plate. This causes an immense buildup of pressure that will eventually be released as the plates shift.
By analyzing marine and land sediments, scientists have concluded that the Cascadia Subduction Zone has produced a series of major seismic events throughout history, approximately 350 years apart. The last of these was in 1700, when an estimated 9.0 magnitude earthquake caused the coastline to drop by several feet and triggered a tsunami that brought further devastation. Current data puts the likelihood of another of these so-called megathrust events taking place within the next 50 years at 37%. But experts, such as Yumei Wang, a geotechnical engineer, and Chris Goldfinger, a Cascadia earthquake specialist, are keen to emphasize that a large-scale earthquake will happen. "This is an earthquake that will definitely occur. It's like death and taxes—it's gonna happen. We just don't know when," Wang has said.
One of the key reasons why the predicted event would be so devastating is that current infrastructure is not built to withstand it. A 2007 study by the state Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI) found that more than 1,000 schools in Oregon were at a "high or very high risk" of collapsing should an earthquake hit. This is due to the use of bricks, which struggle to withstand the sideways shaking caused by quakes. With a megathrust earthquake causing an initial five to seven minutes of continuous shaking, several aftershocks, and a tsunami, such buildings would stand little to no chance of survival.
These findings helped trigger new legislation, which culminated in the country's first state-funded seismic rehabilitation grant, launched in 2009. This money is used to retroactively reinforce schools and other public buildings in Oregon, fortifying them against earthquakes. While progress has been made, much of Portland and wider Oregon remain at risk. A separate study by DOGAMI in 2018 estimated that a Cascadia earthquake would cause 27,000 injuries in the Portland area, ranging from minor to fatal. 85,000 people would be displaced and in need of emergency shelter, and damage to infrastructure would total $37 billion. A 2021 study, meanwhile, estimated that the resulting tsunami would cause more than 18,000 additional fatalities in Oregon's coastal counties alone.
Despite efforts to better prepare the area, government estimates anticipate that, as things stand, the devastation caused by a Cascadia earthquake would leave Oregon cut off from all services and assistance for at least two weeks. Individuals, businesses, and schools are encouraged to take precautionary measures and stay prepared, should the inevitable quake hit sooner rather than later.
Graphic courtesy of Oregon.gov
Filed under Nature and the Environment
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.
From the author of the number-one international bestseller The History of Bees, a captivating story of the power of nature and the human spirit that explores the threat of a devastating worldwide drought, witnessed through the lives of a father, a daughter, and a woman who will risk her life to save the future.
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