“Hypnotic.” – New York Times
“Cinematic.” – USA Today
"I gripped the covers of this book as though it might be blown from my hands. . .powerful." - Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"A full-throttle page turner."– Miranda Cowley Heller, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Paper Palace
An adrenaline-fueled story of lives upended and transformed by an unprecedented catastrophe To all appearances, the Larsen-Hall family has everything: healthy children, a stable marriage, a lucrative career for Brantley, and the means for Daphne to pursue her art full-time. Their deluxe new Miami life has just clicked into place when Luna—the world’s first category 6 hurricane—upends everything they have taken for granted.
When the storm makes landfall, it triggers a descent of another sort. Their home destroyed, two of its members missing, and finances abruptly cut off, the family finds everything they assumed about their lives now up for grabs. Swept into a mass rush of evacuees from across the American South, they are transported hundreds of miles to a FEMA megashelter where their new community includes an insurance-agent-turned-drug dealer, a group of vulnerable children, and a dedicated relief worker trying to keep the peace. Will “normal” ever return?
A
suspenseful read plotted on a vast national tapestry,
The Displacements thrillingly explores what happens when privilege is lost and resilience is tested in a swiftly changing world.
From a nationally bestselling author, an adrenaline-fueled story of a family whose world is upended and erased by an unprecedented, catastrophic hurricane - and who must confront the truths (and lies) of their lives before and after.
Daphne Larsen-Hall had everything she could ever want: a loving and successful husband, three bright children, and the means to pursue her art full time. She thought nothing could dampen her charmed life in Coral Gables, Florida but that was before Luna-the unprecedented category six hurricane-made landfall and stripped all of it away.
Suddenly, her home obliterated, her husband missing in the storm, and access to her finances brutally interrupted, Daphne and the kids join an unprecedented flood of evacuees- not just from Florida, but across the American South. With hundreds of thousands displaced, their bus takes them to a shelter all the way in Oklahoma. There, the life-changing revelations and losses keep on coming, and mother and children find themselves in a newly precarious existence. Once members of a gated community, now indefinitely limited to a single tent among a large, vulnerable population, their lives are transformed by those they come to know: an insurance agent-turned-drug dealer exploiting the weak, a community of migrant children separated from their parents, a FEMA relief worker dedicated to protecting the residents against threats from all sides. As days turn to weeks, tensions rise among all the IDPs-Internally Displaced Persons- as they reckon with the changing environment, the fleeting government resources, and the clash of differing viewpoints from their fellow neighbors, culminating in irrevocable consequences.
A suspenseful novel woven on a vast national tapestry, The Displacements explores privilege and its loss, and the nature of resilience in a swiftly changing world.
Story Locale: Florida, Oklahoma, Texas
Praise for The Displacements:
“A
riveting and humbling reminder of how precarious our lives are in comparison to the power of nature, and a profound glimpse into our near future.”
– Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes
“Realistic and immediate, it puts the reader right in the eye of the emotional storm, alongside its characters. As much as this is a wake-up call about the unpredictable nature of weather and life, it is most powerfully a propulsive family drama and a provocative story of human dignity, human indignity, and the deeper meanings of home.”
– Miranda Cowley Heller, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Paper Palace
“Bruce Holsinger has written a novel that succeeds in confronting the shocking realities of these times without being either apocalyptic or pessimistic.
The Displacements is an urgent, powerful, unputdownable novel, filled with characters that are so vividly drawn that it is impossible not to care about them. A remarkable achievement.”
– Amitav Ghosh, author of Sea of Poppies and The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable
