After the Flood: A Novel

By Kassandra Montag

A Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year

An inventive and riveting epic saga, After the Flood signals the arrival of an extraordinary new talent.

A little more than a century from now, our world has been utterly transformed. After years of slowly overtaking the continent, rising floodwaters have obliterated America’s great coastal cities and then its heartland, leaving nothing but an archipelago of mountaintop colonies surrounded by a deep expanse of open water.

Stubbornly independent Myra and her precocious seven-year-old daughter, Pearl, fish from their small boat, the Bird, visiting dry land only to trade for supplies and information in the few remaining outposts of civilization. For seven years, Myra has grieved the loss of her oldest daughter, Row, who was stolen by her father after a monstrous deluge overtook their home in Nebraska. Then, in a violent confrontation with a stranger, Myra suddenly discovers that Row was last seen in a far-off encampment near the Arctic Circle. Throwing aside her usual caution, Myra and Pearl embark on a perilous voyage into the icy northern seas, hoping against hope that Row will still be there.

On their journey, Myra and Pearl join forces with a larger ship and Myra finds herself bonding with her fellow seekers who hope to build a safe haven together in this dangerous new world. But secrets, lust, and betrayals threaten their dream, and after their fortunes take a shocking—and bloody—turn, Myra can no longer ignore the question of whether saving Row is worth endangering Pearl and her fellow travelers.

A compulsively readable novel of dark despair and soaring hope, After the Flood is a magnificent, action packed, and sometimes frightening odyssey laced with wonder—an affecting and wholly original saga both redemptive and astonishing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9780062889393

Kassandra Montag

Kassandra Montag is an award-winning poet, fiction writer, and freelance medical journalist. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Midwestern Gothic, Nebraska Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and Mystery Weekly Magazine, among others. She holds an MA in English Literature and Creative Writing from Creighton University, and makes her home in Omaha, Nebraska.  After the Flood is her first novel.

Book preview

Prologue

CHILDREN THINK WE make them, but we don’t. They exist somewhere else, before us, before time. They come into the world and make us. They make us by breaking us first.

This was what I learned the day everything changed. I stood upstairs folding laundry, my back aching from Pearl’s weight. I held Pearl inside my body, the way a great whale swallows a man into the safety of his belly, waiting to spit him out. She rolled over in ways a fish never would; breathed through my blood, burrowed against bone.

The floodwater around our house stood five feet high, covering roads and lawns, fences and mailboxes. Nebraska had flooded only days before, water coming across the prairie in a single wave, returning the state to the inland sea it once was, the world now an archipelago of mountains and an expanse of water. Moments earlier, when I’d leaned out the open window, my reflection in the floodwater had returned dirty and marred, like I’d been stretched and then ripped into indiscriminate shreds.

I folded a shirt and screams startled me wide eyed. The voice was a blade, slipping metal between my joints. Row, my five-year-old daughter, must have known what was going on because she screamed, No, no, no! Not without Mommy!

I dropped the laundry and ran to the window. A small motorboat idled in the water outside our house. My husband, Jacob, swam to the boat, one arm paddling, the other clamping Row against his side as she struggled against him. He tried to hoist her onto the boat, but she elbowed him in the face. A man stood in the boat, leaning over the gunwale to pick her up. Row wore a too-small plaid jacket and jeans. Her pendant necklace swung like a pendulum across her chest as she struggled against Jacob. She thrashed and twisted like a caught fish, sending a spray of water into his face.

I opened the window and yelled, Jacob, what are you doing?!

He wouldn’t look at me or respond. Row saw me in the window and screamed for me, her feet kicking at the man who held her under the armpits, lifting her over the side of the boat.

I pounded the wall next to the window and yelled out to them again. Jacob pulled himself over the side of the boat as the man held Row. The panic in my fingertips turned to a buzzing fire. My body shook as I folded myself through the window and leapt into the water below.

My feet hit the ground beneath the water and I rolled to the side, trying to lighten my impact. When I surfaced, I saw Jacob had winced; the pained, tightened expression still on his face. He was now holding Row, who kicked and screamed, Mommy! Mommy!

I swam toward the boat, pushing aside debris that littered the water’s surface. A tin can, an old newspaper, a dead cat. The engine roared to life and the boat spun around, spraying me in the face with a wave of water. Jacob held Row back as she reached for me, her tiny arm taut, her fingers scratching the air.

I kept paddling as Row receded into the distance. I could hear her screams even after I could no longer see her small face, her mouth a dark circle, her hair standing on end, blowing in the wind that came off the water.

Chapter 1

Seven Years Later

SEAGULLS CIRCLED OVER our boat, which made me think of Row. The way she squawked and waved her arms when she was first trying to walk; the way she stood completely still for almost an hour, watching the sandhill cranes, when I took her to the Platte to see their migration. She always seemed birdlike herself, with her thin bones and nervous, observant eyes, always scanning the horizon, ready to burst into flight.

Our boat was anchored off a rocky coast of what used to be British Columbia, just outside a small cove up ahead, where water filled a small basin between two mountaintops. We still called oceans by their former names, but it was really one giant ocean now, littered with pieces of land like crumbs fallen from the sky.

Dawn had just lightened the horizon and Pearl folded the bedding under the deck cover. She had been born there seven years earlier, during a storm with flashes of lightning white as pain.

I dropped bait in the crab pots and Pearl came out from under the deck cover, a headless snake in one hand, her knife in the other. Several snakes were woven around her wrists like bracelets.

We’ll need to eat that tonight, I said.

She sent me a sharp glance. Pearl looked nothing like her sister had, not thin boned or dark haired. Row had taken after me with her dark hair and gray eyes, but Pearl resembled her father with her curly auburn hair and the freckles across her nose. Sometimes I thought she even stood the way he did, solidly and sturdily, both feet planted on the ground, chin up slightly, hair always messed, arms a little back, chest up, as though exposing herself to the world with no fear or apprehension.

I had searched for Row and Jacob for six years. After they were gone, Grandfather and I took to the water on Bird, the boat he’d built, and Pearl was born soon after. Without Grandfather with me that first year, Pearl and I never would have made it. He fished while I fed Pearl, gathered information from everyone we passed, and taught me to sail.

His mother had built kayaks like her ancestors, and he remembered watching her shape the wood like a rib cage, holding people the way a mother held a child within her, sheltering them to shore. His father was a fisher, so Grandfather had spent his childhood on the Alaskan coastal seas. During the Hundred Year Flood, Grandfather had migrated inland with thousands of others, finally settling in Nebraska, where he worked as a carpenter for years. But he always missed the sea.

Grandfather searched for Jacob and Row when I didn’t have the heart to. Some days, I followed languidly behind him, tending to Pearl. At each village, he’d check the boats in the harbor for any sign of them. He’d show photographs of them at every saloon and trading post. On the open sea he’d ask every fisher we passed if they’d seen Row and Jacob.

But Grandfather had died when Pearl was still a baby, and suddenly the enormous task swelled up before me. Desperation clung to me like a second skin. In those early days, I would strap Pearl to my chest with an old scarf, wrapping her snugly against me. And I’d follow the same route he had taken: scouting the harbor, asking the locals, showing photographs to people. For a while it gave me vigor; something to do beyond survival, something that meant more to me than reeling in another fish to our small boat. Something that gave me hope and promised wholeness.

A year ago, Pearl and I had landed in a small village tucked in the northern Rockies. The storefronts were broken down, the roads dusty and littered with trash. It was one of the more crowded villages I’d been to. People hurried up and down the main road, which was filled with stalls and merchants. We passed one stall heavy-laden with scavenged goods that had been carried up the mountain before the flood. Milk cartons filled with gasoline and kerosene, jewelry to be melted and made into something else, a wheelbarrow, canned food, fishing poles, and bins of clothing.

The stall next to it sold items that had been made or found after the flood: plants and seeds, clay pots, candles, a wood bucket, bottles of alcohol from the local distillery, knives made by a blacksmith. They also sold packets of herbs with sprawling advertisements: WHITE WILLOW BARK FOR FEVER! ALOE VERA FOR BURNS!

Some goods had the corroded appearance of having been underwater. Merchants paid people to dive into old houses for items that hadn’t yet been scavenged before the floods and hadn’t rotted since. A screwdriver with a glaze of rust, a pillow stained yellow and heavy with mold.

The stall across from these held only small bottles of expired medications and boxes of ammunition. A woman with a machine gun guarded each side of the stall.

I had packed all the fish I’d caught in a satchel slung over my shoulder, and I hung on to the strap as we walked up the main road toward the trading post. I held Pearl’s hand with my other hand. Her red hair was so dry it was beginning to break off at the scalp. And her skin was scaly and light brown, not from sun, but from the early stages of scurvy. I needed to trade for fruit for her and better fishing supplies for me.

At the trading post I emptied my fish on the counter and the shopkeeper and I bartered. The shopkeeper was a stout woman with black hair and no bottom teeth. We went back and forth, settling on my seven fish for an orange, thread, fishing wire, and flatbread. After I packed my goods in my bag I laid out the photos of Row before the shopkeeper, asking if she’d seen her.

The woman paused, staring at the photo. Then she slowly shook her head.

Are you sure? I asked, convinced her pause meant she’d seen Row.

No girl looks like this here, the woman announced in a thick accent, and turned back to packaging my fish.

Pearl and I made our way down the main road toward the harbor. I’d check the ships, I told myself. This village was so crowded, Row could be here and the shopkeeper could have never seen her. Pearl and I walked hand in hand, pulling away from the merchants as they reached out to us from their stalls, their voices trailing behind us, Fresh lemons! Chicken eggs! Plywood half off!

Up ahead of me, I saw a girl with long dark hair, wearing a blue dress.

I stopped in my tracks and stared. The blue dress was Row’s: it had the same paisley pattern, a ruffle at the hem, and bell sleeves. The world flattened, the air gone suddenly thin. A man at my elbow was nagging me to buy his bread, but his voice came as though from a distance. A giddy lightness filled me as I watched the girl.

I rushed toward her, running down the path, knocking over a cart of fruit, pulling Pearl behind me. The ocean at the bottom of the harbor looked crystal blue, suddenly clean-looking and fresh.

I grabbed the girl’s shoulder and spun her around. Row! I said, ready to see her face again and pull her into my arms.

A different face glared at me.

Don’t touch me, the girl muttered, jerking her shoulder from my grasp.

I’m so sorry, I said, stepping back.

The girl scurried away from me, glancing over her shoulder at me anxiously.

I stood in the bustling road, dust swirling around me. Pearl turned her head toward my hip and coughed.

It’s someone else, I told myself, trying to adjust to this new reality. Disappointment crowded me but I pushed it back. You’ll still find her. It’s okay, you’ll find her, I chanted to myself.

Someone shoved me hard, ripping my satchel from my shoulder. Pearl fell to the ground and I stumbled to the side, catching myself against a stall with scavenged tires.

Hey! I yelled at the woman, now darting down the main road and behind a booth with bolts of fabric. I ran after her, leaping over a small cart filled with baby chicks, dodging an elderly man with a cane.

I ran and spun in circles, looking for the woman. People moved past me as though nothing had happened, the swirl of bodies and voices making me nauseous. I kept looking for what felt like ages, the sunlight dimming around me, casting long shadows on the ground. I ran and spun until I nearly collapsed, stopping close to where it had happened. I looked up the road at Pearl, who stood where she’d fallen, next to the stall with tires.

She didn’t see me between the people and stalls, and her eyes moved anxiously over the crowd, her chin quivering, holding her arm like it’d been hurt in the fall. This whole time she’d been waiting, looking abandoned, hoping I’d return. The fruit in my satchel that I’d gotten for her had been the one thing I was proud of that day. The one thing I could cling to as evidence that I was doing okay by her.

Watching her, I felt gutted and finished. If I’d been more alert, not so distracted, the thief never would have ripped it from my shoulder so easily. I used to be so guarded and aware. Now I was worn down with grief, my hope for finding Row more madness than optimism.

Slowly it dawned on me: the reason the blue dress was so familiar, the reason it had grabbed my gut like a hook. Yes, Row had that same dress, but it wasn’t one Jacob had packed and taken with them when he took her from me. Because I found that dress in her bedroom dresser after she was gone and I slept with it for days afterward, burying my face in her smell, worrying the fabric between my fingers. It had stayed in my memory because it had been left behind, not because she could be somewhere out there wearing it. Besides, I realized, she would be much older now, too large for that dress. She had grown. I knew this, but she remained frozen in my mind as a five-year-old with large eyes and a high-pitched giggle. Even if I ran across her, would I recognize her immediately as my own?

It was too much, I decided. The constant drain of disappointment every time I reached a trading post and found no answers, no signs of her. If Pearl and I were going to make it in this world, I needed to focus on only us. To shut everything and everyone else out.

So we’d stopped looking for Row and Jacob. Pearl sometimes asked me why we’d stopped and I told her the truth: I couldn’t anymore. I felt they were somehow still alive, yet I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t been able to hear about them in the small communities that were left, tucked high in the mountainsides, surrounded by water.

Now we were drifting, spending our days with no destination. Each day was the same, spooling into the next like a river running into the ocean. Every night I lay awake, listening to Pearl breathe, the steady rhythm of her body. I knew she was my anchor. Every day I feared a raider ship would target us, or fish wouldn’t fill our nets and we’d starve. Nightmares engulfed me and my hand would shoot out for Pearl in the night, rattling both of us awake. All these fears lined up with a little hope wedged in the cracks in between.

I closed the crab pots and dropped them over the side, letting them sink sixty feet. As I surveyed the coast, an odd, fearful feeling, a tiny bubble of alarm, rose in me. The shore was marshland, filled with dark grass and shrubs, and trees grew a little farther back from the shore, crowding up the mountainside. Trees now grew above the old tree line, mostly saplings of poplar, willow, and maple. A small bay lay around the shore’s bend, where traders sometimes anchored or raiders lay in wait. I should have taken the time to scope out the bay and make sure the island was deserted. There was never any quick escape on land the way there was on water. I steeled myself to it; we needed to look for water on land. We wouldn’t last another day otherwise.

Pearl followed my eyes as I gazed at the coast.

This looks like the same coast with those people, Pearl said, needling me.

She’d been going on for days about raiders we saw robbing a boat in the distance. We’d sailed away, and I was weary, heart heavy, as the wind pulled us out of sight. Pearl was upset we hadn’t tried to help them, and I tried to remind her it was important we keep to ourselves. But under my rationalizations, I feared that my heart had shrunk as the water rose around me—panic filling me as water covered the earth—panic pushing out anything else, whittling my heart to a hard, small shape I couldn’t recognize.

How were we going to attack an entire raider ship? I asked. No one survives that.

You didn’t even try. You don’t even care!

I shook my head at her. I care more than you know. There isn’t always room to care more. I’ve been all used up, I wanted to say. Maybe it was good I hadn’t found Row. Maybe I didn’t want to know what I’d do to be with her again.

Pearl didn’t respond, so I said, Everyone is on their own now.

I don’t like you, she said, sitting down with her back to me.

You don’t have to, I snapped. I squeezed my eyes shut and pinched the bone between my eyebrows.

I sat down next to her, but she kept her face turned from me.

Did you have your dreams again last night? I tried to keep my voice kind and soft, but an edge still crept in.

She nodded, squeezing the blood from the snake’s tail down to the hole where its head had been.

I’m not going to let that happen to us. We’re staying together. Always, I said. I stroked her hair back from her face and a shadow of a smile crossed her lips.

I stood up and checked the cistern. Almost empty. Water all around but none to drink. My head ached from dehydration and the edges of my vision were beginning to blur. Most days, it was humid; it rained almost every other day, but we were in a dry spell. We’d need to find mountain streams and boil water. I filled Pearl’s water skin with the last of the fresh water and handed it to her.

She stopped playing with her headless snake and weighed the water in her hand. You gave me all the water, she said.

I already drank some, I lied.

Pearl stared at me, seeing right through me. There was never any hiding from her, not like I could hide from myself.

I fastened my knife in my belt and Pearl and I swam to shore with our buckets for clam digging. I was worried it would be too wet for clams, and we both stumbled along the marsh until we found a drier spot to the south, where the sun fell warm and steady. Little holes peppered the mud plain. We began digging with driftwood, but after a few minutes Pearl tossed her driftwood to the side.

We won’t find anything, she complained.

Fine, I snapped. My limbs were heavy with fatigue. Then go up the mountainside and see if you can find a stream. Look for willows.

I know what to look for. She spun on her heel and awkwardly tried to run up the mountainside. The poor thing was still trying to account for the motion of the sea, and she set her feet down too firmly, swaying from side to side.

I kept digging, pulling the mud in piles around me. I hit a shell and tossed the clam in my bucket. Above the wind and waves, I thought I heard voices coming from around the bend in the mountain. I sat back on my heels, alert, listening. A tension settled along my spine and I strained to hear, but there was nothing. I always thought I sensed things on land that weren’t there—hearing a song where there was no music, seeing Grandfather when he was already dead. As though being on land returned me to the past and all the things the past had carried.

I leaned forward and dug my hands into the mud. Tossed another shell into my bucket with a clink. I’d just found another clam when a small, sharp scream pierced the air. I froze, looking up, scanning the landscape for Pearl.

Chapter 2

SEVERAL YARDS UP the mountainside, in front of shrubs and a steep rock face, a wiry man held Pearl, her back against his front, a knife at her throat. Pearl was still, her eyes quiet and dark, her arms at her sides, not able to reach the knife at her ankle.

The man had a desperate, off-kilter look on his face. I stood up slowly, my heart pounding in my ears.

Come with me, he called out. He had a strange accent I couldn’t place, clipped and heavy on the consonants.

Okay, I said, my hands up to show I wasn’t going to try anything, walking toward them.

When I reached them he said, You move and she goes.

I nodded.

I’ve got a ship, he said. You’ll work it. Drop your knife on the ground.

Panic rose up in me as I unfastened my knife and tossed it toward him. He sheathed it at his waist and grinned at me. Holes showed where teeth should be. His skin was tanned to a red brown and his hair grew in sandy patches. A tattoo of a tiger spread across his shoulder. Raiders tattooed their members, often with an animal, though I couldn’t remember which crew used the tiger.

Don’tcha worry. I’ll care for ya. It’s up thataway.

I followed the man and Pearl along the side of the mountain, winding our way toward the cove. Rough grass scratched my ankles and I stumbled over a few rocks. The man lowered the knife from Pearl’s neck but kept his hand on her shoulder. I wanted to reach forward and snatch her out of his grasp, but his knife would be at her throat again before I pulled her away. Quick flashes of how things could go ran through my mind—him deciding he only wanted one of us or there being too many people to fight once we reached his ship.

The man started chatting about his people’s colony up north. I wanted him to shut up so I could think straight. A canteen hung from the man’s shoulder and swung back and forth at his hip. I could hear liquid sloshing inside and my thirst rose above even my fear as my parched mouth ached for water, my fingers itching to reach it and unscrew the cap.

It’s important we have new nations now. Important for . . . The man cast his hand out in front of him, as if he could pluck a word from the air. Organizing. The man nodded, clearly pleased. That’s how it was always done, back in the beginning, when we were still in caves. People aren’t organized, we’d all be snuffed out.

There were other tribes who were trying to make new nations by sailing from land to land, setting up military bases on islands and ports, attacking others and making colonies. Most of them began as a ship that took over other ships, and eventually they began trying to take over communities on land.

The man looked over his shoulder at me and I nodded dumbly, wide eyed, deferential. We were half a mile from our boat. As we approached the bend along the mountainside, the ground dropped away at our side and we walked along a steep rock face. I thought about grabbing Pearl and leaping from the cliff to the water and swimming to our boat, but it was too far in this choppy water. And I couldn’t know if we’d have a clean fall into the water or if there were rocks below.

The man had shifted to talking about his people’s breeding ships. Women were expected to produce a child every year or so, to grow the raider crews. They waited until a girl bled before they moved her to a breeding ship. Until then, she was held captive in a colony.

I’d passed breeding ships when I was fishing, recognized them by their flag of a red circle on white. A flag that warned boats not to approach. Since illness spread so quickly on land, the raiders reasoned the babies would be safer on ships, which they often were. Except when a contagion broke out on a ship and almost everyone died, leaving a ghost ship, unmoored until it crashed against a mountain and drifted to the bottom of the sea.

I know what you’re thinking, the man continued. "But the Lost Abbots—we, we do things the right way. Can’t build a nation without people, without taxes, without having people to enforce those taxes. That’s what gives us the chance to organize.

This yer girl? the man asked me.

I startled and shook my head. Found her on a coast a few years back. He wouldn’t be so keen on separating us if he didn’t think we were family.

The man nodded. Sure. Sure. They come in handy.

The wind changed as we began to make our way around the mountain, and voices from the cove now reached us, a clamoring of people working on a ship.

You look like a girl I know, back at one of our colonies, the man said to me.

I was barely listening. If I lunged forward, I could reach his right arm, pull it behind his back, and reach for my knife in his sheath.

He reached out and touched Pearl’s hair. My stomach clenched. A gold chain with a pendant hung from his wrist. The pendant was dark snakewood, with the engraving of a crane on it. Row’s necklace. The necklace Grandfather had carved for her the summer we’d gone to see the cranes. It was colorless except the drop of red paint he’d placed between the crane’s eyes and beak.

I stopped walking. Where’d you get that? I asked. Blood surged in my ears and my body thrummed like a hummingbird’s wings.

He looked down at his wrist. That girl. One I was telling you about. Such a sweet girl. I’m surprised she’s made it this long. Doesn’t seem to have it in her . . . He gestured with his knife toward the cove. Don’t have all day.

I lunged at him and swiped his right leg with my foot. He tripped and I smashed my elbow down on his chest, knocking the air from him. I stomped on the hand holding the knife, grabbed it, and held it to his chest.

Where is she? I asked, my voice all breath, barely above a whisper.

Mom— Pearl said.

Turn away, I said. Where is she? I pushed the knife farther between his ribs, the tip digging into skin and membrane. He gritted his teeth, sweat gathering at his temples.

Valley, he panted. The Valley. His eyes darted toward the cove.

And her father?

Confusion furrowed the man’s brow. She had no father with her. Must be dead.

When was this? When did you see her?

The man squeezed his eyes shut. I dunno. A month ago? We came here straight after.

Is she still there?

Still there when I left. Not old enough yet— He winced and tried to catch his breath.

He almost said not old enough for the breeding ship yet.

Did you hurt her?

Even now, a pleased look crossed his face, a sheen over his eyes. She didn’t complain much, he said.

I drove the knife straight in, the hilt to his skin, and pulled it up to gut him like a fish.

Chapter 3

PEARL AND I stole the man’s canteen and shoved his body over the side of the cliff. As we ran back to the boat I kept thinking of his crew in the cove, wondering how soon they would start searching for him. There was enough wind, I thought, to push us south quickly. Once Bird got behind another mountain it’d be hard to track us.

When we got back to the boat I raised the anchor, Pearl adjusted the sails, and we surged forward, the coast behind us growing smaller, but I still couldn’t breathe steadily. I hid from Pearl under the deck shelter, my whole body shaking, not unlike how the man’s body shook when he died. I’d been in fights before, tense moments with weapons out, but I hadn’t killed. Killing that man was like stepping through a door to another world. It felt like a place I’d already been to but had forgotten, hadn’t wanted to remember. It didn’t make me feel powerful; it made me feel more alone.

We sailed south for three days until we reached Apple Falls, a small trading port nestled on a mountain that had been in British Columbia. The water in the canteen lasted us only a day, but late on the second day it rained a small bit, just enough that we weren’t ill with thirst by the time we reached Apple Falls. I dropped the anchor over the side and glanced at Pearl. She stood at the bow, staring at Apple Falls.

I didn’t want you to see that, I said to Pearl, watching her closely. Pearl hadn’t spoken to me much since.

Pearl shrugged.

He was going to hurt us. You don’t think I should have done it? You think he was a good person? I asked.

I just didn’t like it. I didn’t like any of it, she said, her voice small. She paused, as if thinking, then said, Desperate people. She looked at me a little too intently. I always said to her, when she asked me why people were cruel, that desperate people did desperate things.

Yes, I said.

Will we try to find her now?

Yes, I said, the word out of my mouth before I knew I’d already decided it. A response beyond reason. Just the image in my mind of Row in danger and me moving toward her, with no choice, only one direction to move, the way rain falls from the sky and does not return to the heavens.

Though I was surprised to realize this, Pearl showed no shock. She merely looked at me and said, Will Row like me?

I walked to her, squatted, and wrapped my arms around her. Her hair smelled like brine and ginger and I buried my face in it, her body as tender and vulnerable as the night I birthed her.

I’m sure of it, I said.

Are we going to be okay? Pearl asked.

We’re going to be fine.

You said everyone is alone. I don’t want to be alone, Pearl said.

My chest tightened and I pulled her close to me again. You won’t ever be alone, I promised. I kissed the top of her head. We better count these, I said, gesturing to the buckets of fish laid out on the deck.

Row is alone out there, I kept thinking, weighing each dead fish in my palm, one part of me asking how much it was worth, the other part imagining her alone on some coast. Did Jacob die? Did he abandon her? My hands shook with cold rage at this thought. He abandons people; that’s what he does.

But he wouldn’t do that to her, I argued with myself, feeling myself being pulled back into the hatred that had kept me awake at night for years after he left. I’d been blinded by love and now, I knew, I was blinded by hate. I had to focus. To remember Row and forget him.

The last three days we’d sailed, a part of me thought of Row incessantly. I had the sense that my entire body was plotting how to reach her, while my consciousness focused on tightening the rope at the block or reeling in fishing line, the small daily tasks that grounded me. There was both a low thrum of panic and shock at discovering she was alive, and a strange animal tranquility as I moved about the boat as if it were simply another day. It was what I’d dreamed of and hoped for and also what I’d feared. Because her being alive meant I had to go after her, had to risk everything. What kind of mother abandons her child in her hour of need? And yet, wouldn’t taking Pearl on this journey be a kind of abandonment of her? An abandonment of the peaceful life we’d fought to build together?

Pearl and I loaded the salmon and halibut into four baskets. We had gutted and smoked the salmon already on our boat, but the halibut was fresh from this morning, which could give us bargaining power.

Apple Falls was aptly named—apple trees had been planted in a clearing between the peaks of two mountains. Thieves were shot by the guards of the orchard, who had watchtowers on each mountain. I was hoping we’d be able to trade for at least half a basket of apples, plus some grain and seed. At our last trading post we had

Reviews for After the Flood

[jbd1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Really liked the premise, but the characters did little for me and I mostly found them fairly irritating or one-dimensional. Lots of potential here, though.

[brookiexlicious · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The author did a spectacular job describing the water laden landscape and the remaining settlements. (Although it was hard for me not to actively think of the movie “Waterworld”) I did have trouble with the boating terms, but a quick Google search helped me to understand them better. Montag also honestly portrayed Myra as not only a grieving mother but as a survivor. As a mother myself, I felt Myra’s anguish and hope alongside her, and the desperation and despair she felt when she was besieged by a setback. I often reflected on Myra’s actions and choices, and what I would do if I was in the same position.

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In this post-apocalyptic story, rising seas have submerged most of the United States, and presumably the rest of the world's livable land. The survivors are forced to either subsist in small villages on the remaining high peaks that are still above water or live on the sea. Myra and her young daughter, Pearl, have a small boat from which they fish and trade. Pearl captures snakes, one of the remaining living animals, and keeps them as pets. Then Myra learns a piece of news that sends her on a desperate mission, dragging Pearl in her wake. Of course, there are all the dangers of being at sea: storms, hidden rocks, pirates. It's a pretty bleak world where there just isn't enough room for everyone. It just seems like this world had no hope for it--and yes, it did remind me of Waterworld. Myra's first-person narration sometimes came across as flat and mechanical, and probably the book goes on a bit too long. But I thought she, Pearl, and the supporting characters were presented well, as flawed, fully rounded people who don't always make the best choices and are trying to not just survive but build lives under impossible circumstances. Maybe I'd better avoid post-apocalyptic fiction for a while (although I have so many more on my TBR).

[thereserose5 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The premise of this book is intriguing, but there were so many holes in how this world works and the main character was unlikable with no depth.

[unclebob53703 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have an entire book case of apocalypse novels, and when I saw that review copies of this were available and that the book wasn't coming out until September I requested a copy. The apocalypse in this case is the flood of the title, though it serves more as a background for the plot than a defining element. The fuel of the plot is the maternal instinct and the match is the narrator's daughter being kidnapped. (This "spoiler" was in the description of the book posted by the publisher.) The story swept me right up as it moved from hope to disappointment to disaster and back again. It took me awhile to warm to the narrator, who constantly analyzes everything that happens and seemed very judgmental for someone who deceives and dissembles her way through much of the book. This is partly a product of first-person narration, which makes it impossible to get into anyone else's head or out of hers. I was eventually won over by the character's unswerving devotion to her child, and because although she judged others constantly, she was hardest on herself, and confronted her own actions and motives with unflinching honesty and courage. Like many of these books, the ending seems a little rushed, and there appears to be plenty of room for a sequel. I'm not a particular fan of multi-volume stories, but in this case the further adventures would not be unwelcome.

[simplykelina · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was sent this book from the publisher/publicity team. My ratings and reviews will be my own personal opinions and are in no way influenced by publishers or authors who may have sent me books to review.Science Fiction tends to be a genre that I rarely reach for, but this one sounded really good. The cover also really grabbed my attention.I really loved the beginning of this one. I was immediately hooked around the story with Row and it was really what kept me reading throughout. I really enjoyed the parts that involved Row and the mystery around what happened to her.I do feel this went on a little too much at times. I needed a little more movement in the middle. However; the author did a great job of throwing enough in at the right moments to pull me back in. Every time I would get to a point of wanting to give up on this one, something would happen to pull me back in.I was happy that the story with Row picked up at the end too. Overall, this was better than I was expecting.

[dianekeenoy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In this dystopian world that is now covered in water except for the tallest mountains, you have a mother and her young daughter sailing alone catching fish to trade for necessities. Myra had given up looking for her older daughter, Row who was kidnapped by her husband while she was pregnant with Pearl. Years later when Myra hears that Row is still alive, she is determined to find her. Throwing her normal caution aside, they set sail to find Row and find a man floating in the wreckage of his boat. While Myra doesn’t want to pick him up, Pearl insists. Daniel is a navigator and his skills are needed to get to the encampment near the Arctic Circle where Row was last seen. When Myra’s boat is wrecked, they are picked up by a much larger ship and Myra realizes that she now has the means to make this difficult trip if she can convince the captain and crew to change their plans for sailing south to heading north.This is really more of an adventure story. It’s filled with pirates, brave women, survival, battles and a little touch of romance. But, most of all, it’s a story of how a mother will do whatever it takes to find her missing child. While I did like this book, it was easy to put down for several days at a time (something I don’t like) but when I put in the extra effort to keep reading and not get up, I did get caught up in this great adventure.

[muddyboy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The world has flooded presumably caused by global warming leaving the people behind either living at high altitudes or on boats. A woman and her daughter are living at sea and are trying to locate her other daughter and husband who left one night without them. She can't understand why. During their quest they meet all manner of good and bad characters landing them eventually in Greenland where she heard they went. The dust jacket indicates this novel is to made into a movie. It will be interesting to see what they do with it.

[mplantenga11 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Overall, the story was interesting. There were some parts where Myra does exactly what she knows she shouldn't do and tries to justify it, which were a little annoying to read through after the 3rd time it happens. The setting of the story was unique and not what I was expecting.

[lisally_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

After the Flood follows a mother's quest for missing daughter on a flooded Earth. What could be an immersive story at times was hampered for me by some weak worldbuilding. Here the world has been flooded save for tops of mountain ranges, but how this happened is only vaguely referred to. There was not only a "long" flood caused by rising sea levels (likely due to climate change, but not explicitly stated), but also some unspecified cataclysm that rapidly covered almost all land in just six years.This would be okay to overlook as an excuse for an interesting setting, but the few isolated villages and settlements lack distinct character. Montag is very good at developing her main character, but this also seems to provide another weak point: the story is set over a hundred years in the future, but never feels like it. Yes, the world was in crisis, but our main character Myra's flashbacks never allude to any differences in technology that likely would have developed over this time. This may have worked better in a more fantastical setting, or perhaps in the more immediate future.The plot itself also seems to rely too much on coincidence to move Myra to where she needs to be. Learning her first daughter is still alive from a random pirate, okay. Except Myra can't navigate to where she is-so enter a shipwreck survivor who happens to be a navigator. When her own boat sinks, convenient rescue comes in a larger ship crewed by a friend of a friend.There are some well done encounters with pirate gangs and some of their creepy victims, but a large chunk of plot revolves around a cliche "lie revealed" plot, with Myra attempting to trick the ship's crew into traveling to her daughter's alleged location. After the Flood had some promise, but just didn't live up to the hype for me.A review copy was provided through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.

[keywestnan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

For me, a lot of the fascination with dystopian and/or post-apocalyptic books (and tv shows and movies) is imagining how or whether I would be able to cope. This novel does a really good job at providing the answer for one particular women, who is trying to survive on Earth when most of it has gone underwater and her family has fractured. It's a good story, well told, and kept me turning pages - I blew through it in a weekend. It strains plausibility in some places (a few too many coincidental meet-ups) - but not in Myra's feelings or behavior. Definitely a good read for anyone already inclined to this kind of story and also for others who might be interested in a story of survival in any circumstances.

[mary6508 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

After the Flood is a dystopian novel, which is why I chose it, and the concept seemed very interesting. The world had flooded, but the author doesn't explain much about how or why this happened. One has to assume things, like global warming, earthquakes, etc. The main character is Myra, whose husband deserted her, taking their daughter Row with him. Eventually she gives birth to another daughter, Pearl. They live on a boat, and together they set out to find Row.They have many adventurous mishaps and meet many people. That's the best I can describe the rest of the book. I found it to drag a bit in many areas, making me less than enthusiastic about continuing my reading. But I did, and I can't say the ending was very satisfying. It's a good concept, so you'll have to decide for yourself if you choose to read it.I received this book from Library Thing's Early Reader club.

[samsattler · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

2019 is proving to be a banner year for fans of dystopian fiction. And for the first time ever, the annual Book Chase Fiction Top Ten list may just end up containing multiple dystopian novels. Already this year, I’ve read three of my all-time favorite novels of that type: Christina Henry’s The Girl in Red; C.A. Fletcher’s A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World; and now Kassandra Montag’s After the Flood. What makes these three so special to me is how effectively each of the authors develops their main characters – regardless of which “end of the world” scenario they have chosen. It helps, too, that each of the books explores the adaptability of children who suddenly find themselves living in (or being born into) a world in which just making it to the end of the day can be considered a major achievement. It's little insights like this one that make After the Flood so believable:"Pearl had to do everything early: swimming, drinking goat's milk, potty training, helping me work the fishing lines. She learned to swim at eighteen months but didn't learn to walk properly until she was three. Instead of walking, she scuttled about Bird (their boat) like a crab. Her childhood was the kind I'd read about in frontier stories, the children who knew how to milk a cow at six or how to shoot a rifle at nine." (page 80)After the Flood takes place just over 100 years from now after rising floodwaters and heavy rains that sometimes lasted for years have so completely flooded the world that survivors are limited to living in mountaintop colonies surrounded by what has effectively become one gigantic ocean. Governments, armies, and policemen no longer exist in what has become very close to an “every man for himself” world. And that’s why some, like Myra and her seven-year-old daughter Pearl, have chosen to live on their boats , venturing onshore only long enough to trade surplus fish for the necessities they cannot provide for themselves. Myra has already lost one daughter, Row, who was stolen away by the girl’s father when he abandoned the then-pregnant Myra to the floodwaters that were about to flood Nebraska. Understandably, Myra trusts no one now – and she is more than willing to kill anyone who threatens Pearl.But everything changes when Myra learns from a stranger that Row has been spotted in a slave colony in what used to be Greenland – and that the young girl will soon be moved into one of the large “breeding ships” parked offshore. Now, desperate to reclaim her daughter before it is forever too late to save her, Myra and Pearl begin a new adventure that will only succeed if they learn to trust strangers. Myra knows that her boat is much too small to survive the long voyage into freezing waters and that she and Pearl won’t be able to steal Row back on their own. When they are invited to live with others aboard a much larger vessel, Myra realizes that she may have solved both her biggest problems: now she has a way to get to The Valley and enough people on her side to make Row’s rescue possible. But does she dare tell them the real reason she wants to go to The Valley? And if she lies to them, placing their lives in danger, hasn’t she turned into exactly the kind of person she was so afraid of just a few days earlier?Bottom Line: After the Flood is what dystopian novel fans are always looking for, a world they can immerse themselves in for a few days – but one they probably would not want to live in no matter how much it fascinates them. Montag doesn’t hit a false note in this one despite my fear that the climax she was heading for would turn the novel into just another run-of-the-mill thriller with a high body-count. I needn’t have worried. Montag is too good a writer to let that happen – and she proves it in After the Flood, her debut novel.

[janarose1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Rising floodwaters have taken over most of the world. Groups of marauders have begun taking over, enslaving those who are left. Myra and her daughter Pearl make a living on the water, fishing and bartering. 8 years ago, Myra's eldest daughter Row was kidnapped by her father. When Myra hears that Row is alive and living in a marauder's colony, she is determined to reach her. When Myra's ship is wrecked, she and Pearl join forces with a larger boat. Through lies and deception, Myra convinces them to sail to the marauder's colony.This was an interesting and engaging story. The characters were realistic and dynamic and the book was well paced. I would love to read more books set in this world. Overall, well worth picking up.

[readaholic12_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I started off with optimism for a well written Post Apocalyptic novel with a strong female lead, but I ended a bit disappointed. I found the main character's story arc, a mother's quest to find her lost daughter in a hostile world, to be compelling and reminiscent of Away, by Amy Bloom, which is a great read. In this future improbable water world, I became distracted by basic scientific, seamanship and survival details, which kept me from engaging in the plot and characters as much as I had hoped.

[renbedell · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An adventure post-apocalyptic novel of a women with one of her daughters on a journey to find the lost daughter taken by her husband. A massive flood occurs that leaves available land to be sparse and people to be cruel. The book starts the story right away. The POV is all from the mother. The character is well-written with motivations mainly seen through quick flashbacks. Some of the supportive characters are interesting, but most of them I wouldn't be able to tell them apart. There are a few moments that are just too convenient, but they do keep the story moving forward. The author writes action sequences in a way that makes them very exciting, but all the writing outside of those moments can be more dull and repetitive. Problems aside, overall I did enjoy the book.

[ecataldi-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thought I was over the doom and gloom of dystopian novels, but I thought wrong. This inventive new take on a world that has flooded had me riveted from the get go. A young mother and her daughter must survive in a world nearly completely flooded. Armed with only their small boat and fishing prowess, they must navigate a society completely torn apart by flooding. Unwillingly to trust anyone except for her daughter she decides that she must track down her first born who was stolen from her by her husband years ago. For once she has a lead and she will stop at nothing to get her back after living with a hopeless dread for years. Filled with pirates, badass women, survival, adventure, and romance; I ADORED this novel and look forward to more from this author! Super fast paced and full of intrigue!

[beamis12 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It has happened. The climate change the scientists have been warning us about for years. The incessant rain has eliminated all our coastal cities. Climate refugees are heading for the middle of the country. Soon though even those cities will be covered with water. Myra and her daughter live in the boat her grandfather built for them before he died. She is searching for the daughter her husband had left with, when the water kept rising. A timely novel, climate change has been a topic much written about in recent years. An adventure story featuring a strong female character, a mamma bear who continually fights for the daughter she has, and the one that is lost. As in many disasters there are those people who will help, against those who take advantage. A fast moving story as there is so much action, though at times this was too much. Also eye rolling on my part accompanied some of the happenings. It was though an entertaining read. Definitely an "I am Woman hear me roar"type of book.ARC from Edelweiss.

[nbmars · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This “cli-fi” book (post-apocalyptic book dealing with climate change from global warming) begins with a great six-year flood that followed The Hundred Year Flood. The continuous flooding not only caused many deaths, but migrations and fighting over scarce resources. A number of raider crews dominated the seas as well as small colonies on land, offering protection in return not only for provisions but for young girls, put on “breeder ships” used to “grow the raider crews.”When the story begins, Myra, heavily pregnant, is abandoned by her husband Jacob when the flooding finally reaches them. He takes their five-year-old daughter Row (short for Rowena) and leaves without a word on a boat with others.The story picks up seven years later. Myra and her second child Pearl, now seven, live on a small boat, trading fish when they can, and asking at each dock if anyone has seen a child fitting Row’s description. She finally hears that Row was seen in a raider-controlled colony called The Valley in the former area of Greenland, and that Row is about to be put on a breeding ship. Myra is desperate to get to her.For the rest of the book, we follow Myra and Pearl and their efforts to get to The Valley. After their boat is destroyed in a storm, a larger boat takes them on, and treats them like family. But Myra deceives them, telling them stories of an alleged halcyon place in Greenland, so they will change course and help her get to Row. It’s a long journey, however, and over time we learn they are all lying in different ways about their pasts. Moreover, before long, the pirates are after them.Discussion: Myra is furious each time she finds out someone else was harboring a secret, even though she is the biggest liar of them all. Moreover, her lies and schemes have mortal consequences. She feels a bit guilty from time to time, but mostly she is totally self-absorbed and obsessed with what she herself wants rather than acknowledging what anyone else wants or needs. Somehow this doesn’t stop everyone from adoring her. Well, everyone except for this reader.As for Pearl, she reminded me of some kind of demon child from horror movies. The men in the novel are so one-dimensional they might be invisible except for their irrational attachment to Myra.I also got the impression the author wanted to impress us with her knowledge of sailing terms and techniques, so she repeatedly invoked them ad infinitum.Evaluation: I not only found the protagonist to be despicable, but I also thought the plot in general was boring and repetitive.

[soubhikiewiet · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Myra and her daughter Pearl live on a boat after the majority of the earth is covered in water due to global warming. There are settlements on the mountain tops that still protrude from the seas, but they are often attacked by raiders. It's hard to trust anyone.I really enjoyed this dystopian thriller. I received an ARC from the publisher through Library Thing's Early Reviewers Program. Put this on your radar for Sept. 2019! Two thumbs up from me!

[katybee_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I received an advance readers copy of the novel "After the Flood" from the Goodreads Giveaway program. This is one of the latest in the increasingly popular sub-genre of futuristic catastrophic climate fiction. It is a strong stand-out because of the extent of the world-wide flooding it describes; the world is almost entirely ocean with only the tops of some mountains remaining as islands. And the story in this water-world setting is very compelling with well-written characters struggling with terrible peril from both nature and desperate people driven to the edge of civilized behavior to survive.At the center of the story is Myra, a mother who was living in Nebraska when the terrible flooding commenced. Her husband abandoned her and took her first daughter, leaving Myra pregnant and with only her grandfather left to help her build a boat to survive and help her through the birth of her second daughter, Pearl. The story goes back and forth between the very harsh water-world dystopia and Myra's memories of her life before the flood and the subsequent collapse of governments and normal life. Myra has a lot of strength and has been surviving as a fisherman and raising her daughter Pearl. However, she aches to find out what happened to her first daughter. Then, one day, she hears a rumor that might be a lead to where her eldest is located and what kind of danger she might be in. Myra is forced to make some terrible choices about who to trust for help and some complicated moral decisions for survival.This is not a story for people who 1) hate ocean settings or 2) reading about children in danger or 3) hate snakes - Myra's second daughter Pearl has a strange love and affinity for pet snakes. But it is a good novel about the indomitable force of a mother's love and a it's horrific vision of climate collapse.

[klarsenmd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I received this book as part of the LT early reviewer program. A mash up of Waterworld and The Road, After the Flood is a wonderfully paced post-apocalyptic thriller and the story of what lengths a mother will go to in order to save a daughter who was stolen from her. There were a few misses for me, the predictability of bits and the repetition of others, the overall plot was well worked and the characters were developed in a way that made them seem like real people. It moved with a quick page turning ease and held a few good emotional punches, despite the fact you could sense what was coming. I good summer read.

[capewood · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Received as an ARC from LibraryThing.Pregnant Myra's husband Jacob, looking for a better life, takes their daughter Row, and disappears. Myra is left with her grandfather to try and raise the new baby, Pearl. Sounds like a simple, if tragic story. But it's worse than that.This is in the future, when, apparently, global climate change has wrecked the planet with global flooding. Myra has to watch helplessly from a second story window as Jacob sails away from their home in Nebraska with Row.The story takes place when Pearl is around 7 (I think). Grandfather had built a boat in the attic of their home and they were able to escape the flood. But, in fact, there is no escaping the flood. Grandfather is long dead. Myra and Pearl fish off the coast of the Rocky Mountains and trade fish for supplies with the small villages struggling on the mountain slops, barely above water.Myra had been hoping to find Row, but had pretty much given up until she fights off a pirate who tells her he believes Row is alive and living in the semi-mythical Valley. Myra finds a map showing that the Vally is in what was once Greenland and immediately makes plans to go there.The story line about Myra searching for her long lost daughter while trying to keep her other daughter alive (and not losing her) is good. Myra learns that she has to trust other people to get along in the world and to complete her quest. A good lesson for anybody in any world.I had some problems in the beginning with this seeming to be a version of Kevin Costner's movie "Waterworld", but go over that. But it is basically the same story, Substitute "Valley" for "Land" and make the main character the little girl's mother rather than Keven Costner and you've got the story. There's even a part for the Dennis Hopper character although not so over the top.I chad problems with the Flood of the title. I'd just got done reading a pretty comprehensive book on the effects of climate change ("The Uninhabitable Earth" by David Wallace-Wells). Even under the most worst case scenario, I think we could expect a couple hundred feet of ocean rise. Kassandra Montag seems to be projecting several 1,000 feet of water rise. But I came to see the flood as more of a metaphor than a scientific fact.I also had minor quibbles with geography. She helpfully provides a map of North America showing the remaining land but sometimes where the characters are is muddled compared to the map. All in all, a good read.

[aimless22 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A page-turner!Well-written debut by Kassandra Montag tells the story of Myra and her daughter, Pearl, surviving on the seas after floods have overtaken most of the earth. Living on a boat, fishing day and night, stopping in the few ports that have popped up in the mountains, and not trusting people.Peppering in information about Myra's past works well and does not take away from the flow of the storytelling, The memories support the current narrative. After a storm, Myra reluctantly saves a man floating on a raft. Pearl insisted. Daniel has navigation skills which Myra needs in order to get to The Valley, where her husband took her firstborn, Row, just before the 100 Years Flood. She has to get to Row before the raiders put her on a breeding ship. The ongoing internal battle of risking one child's life to save/find the other's is ongoing in Myra. How does one choose? There is no option other than to keep moving forward - toward Row.Along the way, Myra must lie and kill in order to preserve her mission. She warily agrees to join a floating community of survivors, captained by Abran, in order to have the means to get to Row. Only Daniel and Pearl know her true intention. They encounter raiders, their pasts, death, and life along the way.

[blbera · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Myra and her daughter Pearl have been sailing on their own for several years, eking out life fishing in a world mostly covered by ocean. The tops of tall mountains are all that remain of land. Myra's husband took their oldest daughter Row and left Myra while she was pregnant with Pearl. She tried to find Row at first, but soon realized that the search endangered Pearl, so she gave it up. When she gets news of Row, however, she starts the search again, and the novel details her journey to find her oldest daughter and the compromises she has to make to find her.After the Flood is a good dystopian novel that brings up many of the ethical issues raised in other dystopian fiction. The Road is one that comes to mind. Myra and Pearl are reminiscent of the father and son in The Road; Myra concentrates on survival, while Pearl wants to help people. Myra also realizes that she wishes she could give her children what she had briefly had: "It felt like cruelty to bury the earth, to take it all away. I'd look at Pearl and think of all she wouldn't know. Museums, fireworks on a summer night, bubble baths. These things were already almost gone by the time Row was born. I hadn't realized how much I lived to give my child the things I valued." The question of how much of the past to hang on to is another question that often comes up in dystopian fiction.This is a solid first novel, well-plotted, with a believable world.

[sirijr · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An ambitious post apocalyptic novel. I think the narration would have been strengthened if it were third person, and there were a number of times where I felt I was being told character development and plot rather than shown through dialogue and action. The pacing and flow were good.

[felliot-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I received an advance reader's copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.Not another dystopian novel. Not another post-apocalyptic novel. Like all good novels, "After the Flood" is not just another post-apocalyptic dystopian novel. In it Kassandra Montag explores what it takes to remain human in the face of disaster. She uses the mother and daughter at the center of the story to delve into the questions that we all live with - how to live as a family and a society, how to trust others (and more importantly yourself), and what is really important. The plot is rather predictable but the characters are so well developed that you can't help be swept up in the story. All in all, a good swashbuckling tale that I would recommend for all readers.

[jessiadams · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“After the Flood” is a post apocalyptic book about a mother and her child trying to survive in a mostly flooded world full of violence, disease and starvation. While maybe not quite as dark as “The Road” it is a sad, dark book full of characters experiencing all forms of grief and loss. I thought the plot was a little far fetched when I started the book, but after reading the ending I forgave the author for that. Would recommend.

[tamarack804-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I would like to thank Library Thing for my advance copy of After the Flood by Kassandra Montag. I enjoyed the book very much. I though it moved along pretty well. The story however was kind of basic and I thought it was dragged out a little long. To me this was a high sea adventure which could have been also told in the past and not the future. Enjoyed the read though, great adventure.

[jgoto_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

After the Flood is a dystopian novel that follows Myra and her 7 year old daughter, Pearl, as they brave their watery world and search for Myra's oldest daughter, Row, who was kidnapped just before her sister was born. Myra struggles with the realities of her world: hunger, thieves, and gangs, as well as her own inner demons of guilt and mistrust. The book is a page turning adventure story, but Kassandra Montag's thoughtful prose turns the book into something more. After the Flood is a work of literary fiction that is well worth the read.