The Last Karankawas

DEBUT Set in the years, months, days, and minutes before Hurricane Ike ravaged Galveston, TX in 2008, this debut is itself a swirling tempest of a novel. Ostensibly centering on Carly Castillo, a young woman of mixed Filipino and Mexican heritage— and, if her grandmother is to be believed, also descended from the Karankawas, an Indigenous Texan people until recently thought extinct—the narrative takes the shape of a narrative curlicue, moving forward and backward in time and alternating viewpoint chapters among friends, family, and even strangers in Carly’s degrees-of-separation orbit. It’s at once a city symphony of Galveston and an affecting portrait of why some people feel drawn to stay or return home while others feel compelled to run, to evacuate the state of their lives. The emotional palette anticipates and mirrors the impending hurricane, which forces more immediate and less abstract decisions onto the novel’s memorable characters, who include an aged former philanderer who hunkers down while his sick wife is moved inland; an anonymous, specterlike former soldier; and Carly’s dementia-addled grandmother, who believes age-old rituals can save the island.