A story of idealism, activism, and systemic corruption, centered on a naïve young woman's quest for agency in a world ravaged by climate change.
Willa Marks has spent her whole life choosing hope. She chooses hope over her parents' paranoid conspiracy theories, over her dead-end job, over rising ocean levels. And when she meets Sylvia Gill, renowned Harvard professor, she feels she's found the justification of that hope. Sylvia is the woman-in-black: the only person smart and sharp enough to compel the world to action. But when Sylvia betrays her, Willa fears she has lost hope forever.
And then she finds a book in Sylvia's library: a guide to fighting climate change called Living the Solution. Inspired by its message and with nothing to lose, Willa flies to the island of Eleutheria in the Bahamas to join the author and his group of ecowarriors at Camp Hope. Upon arrival, things are not what she expected. The group's leader, Roy Adams, is missing, and the compound's public launch is delayed. With time running out, Willa will stop at nothing to realize Camp Hope's mission--but at what cost?
“Allegra Hyde’s seductive first novel tackles the big stuff of climate change and the more intimate matter of heartbreak with grace. Indeed, Eleutheria bravely braids these together, the story of a lost soul moving through the world we’re rapidly losing.”
—Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind
PRAISE FOR ELEUTHERIA
Eleutheria is propulsive, lyrical, and intimate.
Bryan Washington, author of Memorial
A book that never gives up on the possibility of kindness and justice without denying the challenges we live with every day, including inside our own hearts and heads.
Karen Russell, author of Orange World and Other Stories
Eleutheria is a gorgeous, tender book. Allegra Hyde is a dynamic, powerful writer and her first novel is truly something special.
Kristen Arnett, author of With Teeth
Allegra Hyde has written something spellbinding at the intersection of arrival and departure, hope and delusion...a wonderous thing to read.
Omar El Akkad, author of What Strange Paradise
Allegra Hyde creates a singular character in Willa Marks, a troubled young woman whose quest is both hers and ours as she seeks answers to save a dying world.
Ron Rash, author of In the Valley
Eleutheria is gripping, surprising, and full of the poetry of planet Earth.
CJ Hauser, author of The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays
Hyde’s characters are unforgettable, her sentences crystalline. I was surprised and delighted and moved at every turn.
Kirstin Valdez Quade, author of The Five Wounds
Allegra Hyde’s visionary first novel is like a terrarium, a small new world made by someone who cares deeply about our survival.
Jennifer Tseng, author of Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness
Incisive, darkly funny and far-seeing.
Vanessa Hua, author of Forbidden City
Vivid. Wry. Exceptionally clear-sighted.
Morgan Thomas, author of Manywhere
With her captivating novel, Allegra Hyde leads us on a willful, sinuous search for answers in an upended world. Eleutheria is a rallying cry for our collective change of direction.
Pitchaya Sudbanthad, author of Bangkok Wakes to Rain
Eleutheria is a twisty, startling tale of climate change and utopia more than worthy of all its ambition...This is a haunting book about reckless, heartbreaking hope.
Lydia Conklin, author of Rainbow Rainbow
Willa Marks’s journey is a powerful, moving tale, told by a master stylist: every sentence Allegra Hyde writes is alive with grace and power and enviable moral clarity.
Matt Bell, author of Appleseed
"I read Eleutheria in one breathless day, and was sorry to leave this world, where our mistakes and tragedies are shown to be as fully human as our most generous dreams.”
Adrienne Celt, author of End of the World House