About the Book
"She'd told herself, and her husband Tom, that she was coming to rescue Vicky. And she was. She would. She'd been rescuing her sister her entire life. But she'd never done anything remotely this extreme. She knew the region had been evacuated, and yet somehow hadn't pictured everyone literally gone. . .The stark, devastated landscape heightened all her senses, as if her fear made the colors deeper, the smells headier, the sounds crisper. She couldn't give in to the terror; if she did, it might never end. She had no choice but to finish what she'd begun." A devastating earthquake has just hit the San Francisco Bay Area, cutting off the outside world completely. When Lily decides to fly from Nebraska to California and make the treacherous journey into the Bay Area to find her sister, she knows she's headed for a disaster zone, but nothing prepares her for what she finds.
Those who survived and didn't evacuate are making shelters, running meals programs, rigging their own technologies--and redefining the very meaning of community. Lily bands together with a couple of feral kids, a steadfast activist, and a bonobo researcher, among others, to forge a new life.
A piercing, unforgettable story of hope in the face of crisis, The Evolution of Love asks what does it take for people to come together, what dangers must they fend off in their bid for survival, and what lengths will they go to rebuild home.
About the Author :
Lucy Jane Bledsoe is the author of five previous novels, including A Thin Bright Line. Her fiction has won a California Arts Council Fellowship in Literature, an American Library Association Stonewall Award, the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize, a Pushcart nomination, a Yaddo Fellowship, and two National Science Foundation Artists & Writers Fellowships. She's been a six-time Lambda Literary Award finalist and a two-time Ferro-Grumley Award Finalist. Bledsoe lives in the Bay Area where she spends as much time as possible kayaking in the bay, as well as hiking and cycling in the hills.
Review :
Given our current seemingly endless string of natural disasters, this is a timely story and a compelling one. In the context of a twisting plot, in the company of appealing characters, Bledsoe asks us to think about the resilience of love and hate; what our responsibility to each other is; and who we really are, right down to our DNA. Highly recommended.
--Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and The Jane Austen Book Club Lucy Jane Bledsoe's writing leaps off the page with striking clarity. Her characters take you by the hand and lead you through their freshly broken lives, and with them you'll discover shelters of friendship and loyalty.
--Shanthi Sekaran, Author of Lucky Boy
Lucy Jane Bledsoe's The Evolution of Love offers a terrifyingly detailed and believable vision of life in the Bay Area after a devastating earthquake. But more than that, she offers us a vision of what is possible when individuals, even in the most desperate circumstances, refuse to give up on love and hope. The Evolution of Love is the book we all need these days: a post-disaster page-turner that's also a blueprint for how we might live right now.
--Naomi J. Williams, author of Landfalls
This fast-paced nail biter of a novel uses a disaster in the near future to explore a basic question: can love save us from ourselves? I read ravenously to find the answer. Lucy Jane Bledsoe is a brave and brainy writer, and The Evolution of Love is a rare mix of erudition, adventure and hard-won wisdom.
--Summer Wood, author of Raising Wrecker
"In a lucid, urgent novel riven by timely concerns and authentic feeling, Bledsoe's characters reveal how our greatest hopes most often live in community."
--Edie Meidav, author of Kingdom of the Young and Lola, California
As a child growing up in California I created a dystopian fantasy world fueled by the visions of Margaret Atwood, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. I seemed to have an internal GPS which I worked hard to develop because I knew I would need it once the Tempest was upon us. I devised escape routes for every imaginable natural and man-made catastrophe. Reading The Evolution of Love was like re-living my childhood. I was committed from page one and fell in love with, and was frustrated by, every flawed and highly complex character. It is a gifted writer who can take me through a full range of human emotions and leave me wanting more. I hope that Lucy Jane Bledsoe's The Evolution of Love is only the beginning, because we sure do need a guide book for our beleaguered species just about now.
--Del LaGrace Volcano, Artist/Activist/Educator
Praise for A Thin Bright Line
It triumphs as an intimate and humane evocation of day-to-day life under inhumane circumstances.
--New York Times Book Review
Empowering and bold.
--Publishers Weekly
A stirring and deeply felt story.
--Kirkus Reviews
Gripping historical fiction about queer life at the height of the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement.
--Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home
Lucy Jane Bledsoe's A Thin Bright Line is a testament to courage and perseverance in the face of oppression. It's also a compelling, literary page-turner worthy of standing alongside the works of Pat Barker and Graham Greene. It reminds us that we are nothing, deep down, without love and dignity.
--Patrick Ryan, author of The Dream Life of Astronauts
Praise for The Big Bang Symphony
"In this compelling novel, Bledsoe captures the deadly beauty of the southernmost continent....A well-balanced humdinger of a story keeps this unusual novel hurtling along like a skidoo on the ice.
--Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Biting The Apple
Pound for pound, Bledsoe's books are hard to beat....Bledsoe, who seems incapable of a false or unwieldy sentence or motion...takes us there to the end of the journey one unflinching page at a time.
--Kevin Killian
A haunting and profoundly satisfying novel.
--Lambda Book Report
