BLAZE ISLAND

BLAZE ISLAND enfolds a gripping human story within the larger presence of the constantly shifting elements: wild winds that grow wilder, the haunting parade of icebergs that float past Miranda's door, melting as they travel ever-farther south.

A mammoth Category Five hurricane sweeps up the eastern seaboard of North America, leaving devastation in its wake, its outer wings brushing over tiny Blaze Island in the North Atlantic. In the aftermath of the storm, Miranda Wells, teenaged daughter of weather-watcher Alan Wells, finds herself in an altered world, as does Caleb Borders, the young man from the island who works for her father. Who is the youthful stranger who has crashed his car in the midst of the storm and seeks refuge in Miranda's isolated home? Who are the three men who have flown to the island hours before the storm in a sleek corporate jet?

Just as the storm disrupts the present, it stirs up the past: Miranda's days growing up in an isolated, wind-swept cove, and the long-ago past that her father will not allow her to speak of—when he was a renowned scientist running a Centre for Climate and Cryosphere Studies in Princeton, New Jersey, before climate-change deniers made him their target with terrifying consequences. While Miranda contends with the astonishing secrets that the stranger, Frank Hansen, reveals to her, Caleb grapples with alarming discoveries about the three visitors who find themselves stranded on Blaze Island. Both Caleb and Miranda are compelled to wonder: Is her father a man capable of working on a private and contentious climate engineering project that would attempt, despite huge risks, to cool the world's dangerously warming weather by shooting particulates high into the atmosphere?

Blaze Island asks how far a parent will go to create a safe world for a child. And what the children of today will need to do in order to imagine a future for themselves. How do you imagine a tomorrow when the present seems, whichever way you look, to be hovering on the brink of catastrophe? Dramatizing the complex emotions that arise in the face of the climate crisis and intensifying ecological loss, Blaze Island enfolds a gripping human story within the larger presence of the constantly shifting elements: wild winds that grow wilder, the haunting parade of icebergs that float past Miranda's door, melting as they travel ever-farther south.

Catherine Bush is the multi-award nominated author of four novels including Accusation (Goose Lane Editions, 2013), Minus Time (Hyperion in the US, HarperCollins Canada, Serpent's Tail,UK,1993), The Rules of Engagement (FSG in the US, HarperCollins Canada, etc., 2000), and Claire's Head (McClelland and Stewart, 2004). She is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Creative Writing MFA at the University of Guelph. Find out more about Catherine at catherinebush.com