The Names of the New World - by Kawai Strong Washburn (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The highly anticipated second novel from the award-winning novelist Kawai Strong Washburn: an extraordinary saga of resilience and ambition in the face of a chaotic world.

A superstorm strikes Minneapolis with a ferocity the world has never seen before, though the results are familiar: lives are lost, neighborhoods destroyed, communities upended. This is the new normal, perhaps, but faster and more intense than anyone had planned for.

In the wake of the storm, three people forge an unlikely bond that will shape their personal and professional lives for the next twenty-five years. Naomi, a lawyer by day and an amateur MMA fighter by night, is a Pacific Islander transplanted to the midwest for her less-than satisfying career. Amaré is a young investment banker who has grand intentions for all the money he's about to make. And Raheem is a diesel-truck mechanic who finds himself in very bad shape after the storm.

It soon becomes clear to Naomi that the storm, and subsequent weather disasters, are preventable and manmade. When she initiates a legal battle in response, she finds herself instead carried to a politically powerful position in Washington, DC. Her burgeoning relationship with Amaré sustains and challenges them both as it competes with their ambitions. And in the meantime, Raheem's fate as a blue-collar business owner remains deeply intertwined with the grand projects of his two world-beating friends.

Following his much-loved debut, Sharks in the Time of Saviors, Kawai Strong Washburn again turns his remarkable gift of mythic sight to the oceans and landscapes we so often overlook in the name of progress. The Names of the New World unfolds with the bold grandeur of a social novel like The Bonfire of the Vanities intertwined with the will-they-won't-they suspense of Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. Spanning from the midwest to Washington, DC, to Naomi's native Pacific Islands, The Names of the New World is, above all, a startling, energetic, and optimistic vision from a dazzling young author of how we'll all live in our era of overwhelming change.