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Deep Dive Discussion Series

Karen Russell's 'The Antidote'

Join librarians from Orange and Beachwood branches as we explore Karen Russell’s spellbinding dust bowl epic, National Book Award finalist 'The Antidote' in this 4-week, in depth discussion series.

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.

A syllabus with details on weekly topics and readings will be e-mailed to all registered participants prior to the first discussion.

Copies of The Antidote and other selected texts will be held on reserve at the Orange and Beachwood branches starting March 1st.