The Antidote by Karen Russell

This is a novel of fiction with a tincture of magical realism, but built upon a foundation of history, also known as historical fiction. The book has four protagonists, all with some connection to uncanny powers. It takes place in 1930s Nebraska, amidst a terrifying Dust Bowl wreaking havoc on hundreds of rural communities. One of these communities is Uz, a small agrarian town , where a prairie witch who calls herself “The Antidote” does business. Prairie witches serve as a kind of memory ‘vault,‘ taking in the weight of people’s memories, good or bad, in exchange for a feeling of lightness and hope. When The Antidote loses her memory deposits in a dust storm on Black Sunday, she fears for her safety yet cannot leave the dying town of Uz, as she awaits her long-lost son stolen from her in infancy. Then there is Harp Oletsky is a farmer who finds his land is miraculously spared from the catastrophic “Black Sunday” dust storm; in its wake, the sky is blue over his fields alone, and they fill with healthy wheat. His teenage niece, Dell, is dealing with the murder of her mother by obsessively playing basketball and apprenticing herself to the Antidote as a trainee witch. Cleo Allfrey is a black photographer, sent to Nebraska by the New Deal’s Resettlement Administration to document the suffering of farmers. She buys a camera in a local pawn shop that turns out to have uncanny powers of its own: its photographs show scenes from potential futures and forgotten pasts. The novel also has brief sections from the perspectives of a haunted scarecrow and a stray cat. The story is a bit of a meander, but it cannot be denied that this book is wholly unique and thought provoking. As there is an effort at the national government level to white wash our history, there will be powerful voices reminding us of it.