Today’s GalleyCrush is Allegra Hyde’s Eleutheria, forthcoming from Vintage on March 8, 2022.
Perfect pitch: “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.”
First lines: “My father had a theory for why people went to the ocean in the summer, spent their savings, their vacation days, to plant themselves on a patch of sand within sight of the water. Even if they don’t know it, my father said, what they want is to be close to death.”
Book buzz: “Eleutheria is utopian writing at its best and boldest, unflinching in its ideals and unafraid to depict the complexities of people seeking real solutions and taking real actions in the face of the climate crisis. 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
Cover credit: Maddie Partner
Book notes: Paperback, fiction, 336 pages.
Author bio: Allegra Hyde’s debut story collection, Of This New World, won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award through the Iowa Short Fiction Award Series. Her writing has also appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, Kenyon Review, New England Review, and the Threepenny Review, among other publications. Originally from New Hampshire, she currently lives in Ohio and teaches at Oberlin College.
