Rising is both a highly original work of lyric reportage and a haunting meditation on how to let go of the places we love.
With every record-breaking hurricane, it grows clearer that climate change is neither imagined nor distant- and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways. In Rising, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through these dramatic changes, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish.
Rush sheds light on the unfolding crises through firsthand testimonials-a Staten Islander who lost her father during Sandy, the remaining holdouts of a Native American community on a drowning Isle de Jean Charles, a neighborhood in Pensacola settled by escaped slaves hundreds of years ago- woven together with profiles of wildlife biologists, activists, and other members of these vulnerable communities.
