From the Caves

To escape the choking heat of deep summer, Sky and his family survive on stories of the dead in an underground darkness at the end of the world. Environmental catastrophe has driven four people inside the dark throat of a cave: Sky, a child coming of age; Tie, pregnant and grieving; Mark, a young man poised to assume primacy; and Teller, an elder, holder of stories. As the devastating heat of summer grows, so does the poison in Teller's injured leg and the danger of Tie's imminent labor, food and water dwindling while the future becomes increasingly dependent on the words Sky gleans from the dead, stories pieced together from recycled knowledge, fragmented histories, and half-buried creation myths. From the Caves presents the past, present, and future in tandem, reshaping ancient and modern ideas of death and motherhood, grief and hope, endings and beginnings.

About the Author :
Thea Prieto is a recipient of the Laurels Award Fellowship, as well as a finalist for the international Edwin L. Stockton, Jr. Award and Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers. She writes and edits for Poets & Writers, Propeller Magazine, and The Gravity of the Thing, and her work has also appeared at New Orleans Review, Longreads, Entropy, The Masters Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she teaches creative writing at Portland State University and Portland Community College. From the Caves is her first book.

Review :
“From the Caves hits like a postapocalyptic punch in the gut. It’s both a devastating cautionary tale and a terrible and beautiful testimony for the power of stories to transcend through impossible grief.” —Doug Lawson, author of Bigfoots in Paradise "Prieto, whose micro-fiction was published in The Masters Review in 2016, debuts with this haunting novella, the winner of 2019 Red Hen Press Novella Award, in which environmental catastrophe has driven four people inside a cave." —The Masters Review Blog “As parched as J. G. Ballard’s The Burning World, From the Caves is about persistence in the face of collapse and disaster, the roles we fall into in relation to one another, and how we rise to meet new roles when necessity demands. An oddly hopeful yet quietly brutal book about living past the end of the world.”—Brian Evenson, author of The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell “From the Caves is a striking, suspenseful novella about calamity, transformation, and the stories we tell to keep ourselves alive. Thea Prieto’s haunting vision resonates evocatively with our own present and future on an imperiled Earth.”—Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks “From the Caves shows us our past and our future in the same breath. Guiding us on a compelling exploration of the endurance of artifact, the tradition of storytelling, and the impermanence of the human body, Prieto is a writer to be reckoned with.”—Lily Brooks-Dalton, author of Good Morning, Midnight "In Prieto’s trenchant debut, she describes the unforgiving elements of nature with beautiful prose: 'the suck of low tide holds pockets of noise—a hissing wind, the boom of brown ocean waves.' This is a gut punch of a dystopian novel." —Publishers Weekly "Luminous. Powerful. Transcendent." —Michael Kaufman, The Last Resort "One new release that I hope gets all the attention and more is Thea Prieto’s novella From the Caves, winner of the Red Hen Press Novella Award. From the Caves exists in an ethereal place, one indebted to myth but also the very real environmental catastrophe that we are currently immersed in. Prieto’s debut volume is shadowed by fire and darkness, but within that veiling there yet exists hope, a certain hope." —Kenyon Review "The characters start out feeling archetypal—mother, father, child, elder—but they develop into deeply realized people who, despite suffocating proximity with one another, seem to grieve alone." —Heavy Feather Review "That said, the first thing that comes to mind when reading Thea Prieto's From the Caves is that it gives off "major A24 vibes." This novella screams out to be made into a movie. It is filled with rich language and vibrant imagery in a way that lends itself to cinema." —Diagram 21.5 "A fantastic novella of literary merit ... Told in language that sings from the point of view of Sky ... The book is dark and bleak at times, but the fresh and lyrical language and the wildness of the hot and desolate future world really keep you turning pages. Picture Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but told from the child's point of view. A necessary tale to think about the effects of climate change and how language and stories may be the key to our survival." —Bear Pond Books Staff Pick and Literary North "Layered with profound reflections, honest questions and heartfelt moments—particularly around motherhood and the fabric of our environment that connects us all—From the Caves is a powerful novella that is undaunted in its pursuit of meaning in darkness. Its haunting poetry is sure to leave its own memorable imprint on any reader searching for the connection that only words can bring." —Lillie Gardner, EcoLit Books