NPR's Book of the Day A new novel from Karen Russell is a sprawling story set during the Dust Bowl
Dec 30, 2025
In this engaging conversation, novelist Karen Russell, a MacArthur Fellow hailed for her inventive fiction, dives into her new book, The Antidote, set against the dire backdrop of the Dust Bowl. She introduces us to Antonina, a woman with the extraordinary gift of storing memories, and discusses how the harrowing Black Sunday storm impacts her life. Russell also touches on the visionary photographer Cleo and the powerful role of photography in shaping our understanding of history and the future, emphasizing the responsibilities tied to memory and loss.
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Woman Who Stores Memories
- Karen Russell imagined Antonina years earlier as a woman holding an ear horn while a man whispered secrets into her body.
- Antonina stores others' memories in her subconscious vault after losing her baby at a home for unwed mothers.
Photographing Time Layers
- Cleo Alfre's camera reveals layered times on the same land, showing past Native flourishing and imagined futures.
- The photographs collapse temporal boundaries to argue that history cohabits with the present.
Camera As Moral Weapon
- Gordon Parks' belief that the camera can be a weapon against social wrongs shaped Cleo's worldview.
- Russell uses that idea to make photography a moral and imaginative tool in the novel.