Vigil Harbor

The National Book Award–winning Glass (I See a House Among the Trees) reveals the state of the world using one small coastal community, Vigil Harbor, MA, ten years in the future. College drop-out Brecht, who says he is generation NL (No Life), moves home to recuperate after an activist-set bomb blast in New York City killed a friend. His stepfather, Austin, has a successful architectural practice designing and building homes to withstand the fury of stronger coastal storms. Petra pretends to be a journalist as she dogs Austin, trying to get him to explain his insensitive breakup with her artist friend Issa, a woman who imagines she was a creature from the sea. Margo, an ex-English teacher with an attitude, finds an unlikely friendship with Mike because his wife ran off with her husband. Mike doesn’t dwell on his new-found bachelor status, because, as a marine biologist, he’s more concerned about the dire effects of climate change and disappearing ocean species. Everyday life comes to a halt when climate activists bent on violence set off a bomb on the Harvard campus and escape to nearby Vigil Harbor. The bar is going up on surviving what is to come.