Allegra Hyde
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Eleutheria~A story of idealism, activism, and systemic corruption, centered on a naïve young woman’s quest for agency in a world ravaged by climate change.~
Willa Marks has spent her whole life choosing hope. She chooses hope over her parents’ paranoid conspiracy theories, over her dead-end job, over the rising ocean levels. And when she meets Sylvia Gill, renowned Harvard professor, she feels she’s found the justification of that hope. Sylvia is the woman-in-black: the only person smart and sharp enough to compel the world to action. But when Sylvia betrays her, Willa fears she has lost hope forever. And then she finds a book in Sylvia’s library: a guide to fighting climate change called Living the Solution. Inspired by its message and with nothing to lose, Willa flies to the island of Eleutheria in the Bahamas to join the author and his group of ecowarriors at Camp Hope. Upon arrival, things are not what she expected. The group’s leader, author Roy Adams, is missing, and the compound’s public launch is delayed. With time running out, Willa will stop at nothing to realize Camp Hope’s mission—but at what cost? “In this superb debut novel, Allegra Hyde creates a singular character in Willa Marks, a troubled young woman whose quest is both hers and ours as she seeks answers to save a dying world. Eleutheria’s timeliness alone is enough to justify a wide and appreciative audience, yet Hyde’s exceptional artistic gifts—especially the complex characters and charged language—make this novel’s urgent concerns all the more powerful.”
—Ron Rash, author of In the Valley “Clear-eyed, buoyant, and far-reaching, Eleutheria is a story about the tremulous balance between honesty and pleasure in human life. At once a canny climate novel and a heartbreaking story of love and loss, Hyde’s book playfully dodges between the personal and the political while giving full attention to both. I read Eleutheria in one breathless day, and was sorry to leave this world, where our mistakes and tragedies are shown to be as fully human as our most generous dreams.” —Adrienne Celt, author of End of the World House “With her captivating novel, Allegra Hyde leads us on a willful, sinuous search for answers in an upended world. Eleutheria is a rallying cry for our collective change of direction.” —Pitchaya Sudbanthad, author of Bangkok Wakes to Rain “Eleutheria is utopian writing at its best and boldest, unflinching in its ideals and unafraid to depict the complexities of people seeking real solutions and taking real actions in the face of the climate crisis. Willa Marks’s journey is a powerful, moving tale, told by a master stylist: every sentence Allegra Hyde writes is alive with grace and power and enviable moral clarity.” —Matt Bell, author of Appleseed Available for order:
Allegra Hyde’s debut story collection, OF THIS NEW WORLD, won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award through the Iowa Short Fiction Award Series. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, The Best Small Fictions, and The Best American Travel Writing. Originally from New Hampshire, she currently lives in Ohio and teaches at Oberlin College.
Tags: Adult, LGBTQIA+, Literary, Speculative Fiction/SFF
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