Climate fiction often spans speculative fiction, literary fiction, fantasy, and eco-fiction as it addresses topics such as carbon emissions, vanishing species, and global warming. However, cli-fi seems virtually limitless in its scope, subjects, and approaches, as these novels of lyrical observation, loss, and wonder illustrate.

Charlotte McConaghy introduces Franny Stone, a wanderluster in Greenland who is as much lost as she is wandering, an expert swimmer captivated by the oceans and by birds. In Migrations (Flatiron. ISBN 9781250204028. 2020), McConaghy places Franny in a vaguely distant world that has suffered the loss of many animal breeds. Tagging three Arctic terns with transmitters, Franny is desperate to gain passage aboard any nearby fishing ship so that she can aid the terns’ arrival at their Antarctic migration site. A fishing boat captain agrees to offer passage, relying on the emotionally broken Franny’s vows that the birds will lead the boat to fish. It is evident early on that Franny is a deeply distraught traveler whose night terrors indicate her troubled past. The peril facing all of nature is at odds with the tremendous amount of work and hope showcased in the novel. As Franny notes: “A life’s impact can be measured by what it gives and what it leaves behind, but it can also be measured by what it steals from the world.” SUGGEST NEXT: In Once There Were Wolves, Charlotte McConaghy presents another view of the challenges of climate change.

Franny swims in dangerous waters, but Blister, a young female gondolier, navigates the seas of Karen Russell’s “Gondoliers,” one of the pieces in Russell’s inventive, near-fantastical eco-conscious collection Orange World and Other Stories (Vintage. ISBN 9780525566076. 2020). The youngest of four sisters, Blister courses an area referred to as “New Florida,” the watery world that was previously Florida’s coastline. Poorly designed seawalls and climate catastrophes have caused this area to evolve into tiny tree islands awash in water. Carrying a very ill passenger, an engineer likely partially responsible for the demise of the coast, gliding into off-limit regions where cities once thrived, Blister slaloms the poisonous algae-crowded waters, trying to intuit sea changes while slowly moving ahead through channels of her own resonant self-inquiry. SUGGEST NEXT: Pump Six and Other Stories, by Paolo Bacigalupi, offers other unusual scenarios of disastrous climate devastation.

Karen Thompson Walker’s Age of Miracles (Random. ISBN 9780812992977. 2021) also features a young person questioning life. Julia, a serious, lonely middle school student, becomes aware of the doomsday era approaching her world. After an earthquake, somehow more time is added to the normal 24 hours in a day. Although it’s not yet an apocalyptic scenario, it is evident that major changes are coming and that terrible events and outcomes are on the horizon. Julia, though, has plenty on her plate already, between shaky preteen friendships, crushes, and family unrest, so she always feels burdened—even without shifting gravity, land animals dying, sea animals washing ashore, and suddenly burntout vegetation. When the new daylight hours make food scarce, the government mandates a return to 24-hour clock time and sparks a resistance movement. Walker’s accomplished, restrained study of a complicated, provocative future of an evolving dystopian world presents a bafflingly frightened and lost Julia, who can never be quite sure of just how life will continue. SUGGEST NEXT: Road Out of Winter, by Alison Stine, provides additional dystopian glimpses.

Jesmyn Ward’s terrifying and triumphant Salvage the Bones (Bloomsbury USA. ISBN 9781608196265. 2012) details the riveting events developing before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. Twelve days before the shocking, devastating storm hits the Gulf Coast, the young pregnant teenager Esch, her three brothers, and their mostly absent, heavy drinking father can follow the signs of the coming tempest and are busily securing their tumble-down home. But there is not much to gather, little more to sustain, and the storm is unstoppable. Brilliantly constructed, with parallels that unfold through family history and literature, Ward details the life of this small collective of caring, cared for people, trying to find their way in a world that is blowing them and the landscape apart. SUGGEST NEXT: Another glimpse of other storm conditions can be found in A Children’s Bible, by Lydia Millet.

In Flight Behavior (Harper. ISBN 9780062124265. 2012), Barbara Kingsolver brings attention to the perilous plight of the monarch butterfly. Illustrating cataclysmic climate disruption after rain-filled months, Kingsolver focuses on a young, dissatisfied farmer’s wife, Dellarobia Turnbow, who, while headed to an afternoon assignation, climbs a sodden piedmont only to glimpse a “sea of fire.” The magical site of millions of monarchs stuns and attracts the attention of many people, including a visiting butterfly expert. The monarchs have gone off course from Mexico and their new settlement is risky for them. Living through this short but amazing time offers Dellarobia a life metamorphosis of her own, as she develops a wider understanding that the planet’s changes are dependent on the actions of humanity, and her new monarch knowledge presents her with the opportunity to spread her own wings. SUGGEST NEXT: The Butterfly’s Daughter, by Mary Alice Monroe, is another interesting, transformational tale of migrating butterflies.

This column was written by librarian and freelance writer Andrea Tarr, Alta Loma, CA.