-
Access Our
Most Anticipated
Books of 2025!
Summary | Discuss | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
A Novel
by Karen Russell
Book Reviewed by:From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove Karen Russell: a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town.
The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch," whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples' memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch's apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town's secrets and its fate.
Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation's forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.
Thoughts on The Antidote by Karen Russell (spoilers!)
I liked it but there were parts that didn't work well for me. it was the ending that made it worthwhile. I suspect I will always love Karen Russell's Swamplandia best.
-Anne_Glasgow
What book or books are you reading this week? (02/06/2025)
Carys Davis' Clear , Karen Russell's Antidote , listening to Louise Penny's The Madness of Crowds Love them all!
-Nancy_B
What book or books are you reading this week? (01/30/2025)
Just about finished with "The Briar Club" by Kate Quinn. It's a long read, I am enjoying it immensely. Next is "The Antidote" by Karen Russell (ARC book)
-Ruth_Hollandsworth
It's a captivating story; part of the fun of the novel is seeing how Russell ties the plotlines together, and the satisfying way she does so is a wonder to behold... Russell explores not only environmental issues, but racism, the displacement of Native Americans by government-sponsored settlers, the perceived role of women in 1930s America, and much more...continued
Full Review
(714 words)
This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access,
become a member today.
(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
Dinaw Mengestu, author of Someone Like Us
With The Antidote, Karen Russell proves once again that there is no limit to her extraordinary imagination. She creates marvels out of what we imagine to be the ordinary world, she turns the historical novel upside down and shakes from it a thing of exquisite beauty that is unlike anything you've ever read. Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!
Only Karen Russell could write a dust bowl opus with such raucous brio. Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds
Achingly gorgeous... this book is as profound as it is wonderfully strange. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars
Here in The Antidote, Karen Russel has summoned her singular brand of alchemy and created an epic of heart and devastation, community and laughter, death and life. A book that has it all. An absolute wonder. Rivka Galchen, author of Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch
Every page is pocked with joy, beauty, wildness and the perfect wisdom of mystery. Tommy Orange, author of Wandering Stars
This novel swept me up and carried me away.
One of the protagonists in The Antidote is Cleo Allfrey, a photographer dispatched by the Resettlement Administration to document life in Nebraska's Dust Bowl. She and others in the book mention a similar, real-world project: a documentary titled The Plow That Broke the Plains.
The Plow That Broke the Plains was a controversial, federally funded film that explored the causes behind the Dust Bowl. In the time of the booming demand for grain during and right after World War I, Midwestern farmers looked for ways to improve their land's yield. In the Great Plains in particular—a grassland prairie ecosystem that stretches across the middle part of the United States—one method was to plow up native grasses so more wheat could ...
This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.
If you liked The Antidote, try these:
by Louise Erdrich
Published 2024
In this stunning novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author Louise Erdrich tells a story of love, natural forces, spiritual yearnings, and the tragic impact of uncontrollable circumstances on ordinary people's lives.
by Tommy Orange
Published 2019
Fierce, angry, funny, heartbreaking - Tommy Orange's first novel is a wondrous and shattering portrait of an America few of us have ever seen, and it introduces a brilliant new author at the start of a major career.
Jane and Dan at the End of the World
by Colleen Oakley
Date Night meets Bel Canto in this hilarious tale.
Girl Falling
by Hayley Scrivenor
The USA Today bestselling author of Dirt Creek returns with a story of grief and truth.
The Dream Hotel
by Laila Lalami
A Read with Jenna pick. A riveting novel about one woman's fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.
Raising Hare
by Chloe Dalton
A moving and fascinating meditation on freedom, trust, and loss through one woman's friendship with a wild hare.
The Antidote
by Karen Russell
A gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town.
A million monkeys...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!