3.5
The Antidote
ByPublisher Description
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove Karen Russell: a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town
A Most Anticipated Book of 2025 from Lit Hub, Marie Claire, TIME, Vulture, Esquire, People, The Chicago Review of Books, and BookPage
The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch,” whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.
Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.
A Most Anticipated Book of 2025 from Lit Hub, Marie Claire, TIME, Vulture, Esquire, People, The Chicago Review of Books, and BookPage
The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch,” whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.
Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.
Download the free Fable app
Stay organized
Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.
Build a better TBR
Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building tool
Rate and review
Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags
Curate your feed
Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesStay organized
Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.Build a better TBR
Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building toolRate and review
Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tagsCurate your feed
Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Antidote Reviews
3.5
Angie L.
Created 29 days agoShare
Report
“This book is 4.5 stars, and I couldn’t put it down these past couple of days. The Dust Bowl is one of the most interesting eras in American History, and adding a prairie witch, a scarecrow, a cat, and a corrupted sheriff to a 1930s western Nebraska town is brilliant storytelling.”
Rosie the Reader
Created about 1 month agoShare
Report
“I really enjoyed this book and it gives a lot to think about. The way the story unfolds and the background stories of the characters unfold are done very well. It confronts many sociopolitical issues. The ending was a bit weird, not bad, but not what I expected. I’m left with a feeling of wanting something more but not knowing what that is.
I enjoyed the photos throughout the book.
The magical elements were mostly necessary for driving the plot but never explained in the how and why. The elements also did not fit together well. What was the reason for the son’s memories going into the scarecrow, what was the connection? Why was Harp’s farm protected? What and why was the camera? The camera was the most odd of the magical elements because it wasn’t really needed for either the sheriff plot or the native plot (she could have just taken a regular picture of the sheriff hiding evidence if there needed to be photographic proof)
The scarecrow reveal in the end felt a bit out of nowhere and just used to tie up a loose end. I would’ve preferred a different ending or even no satisfactory ending for that character.
The book seemed like it had two competing plots, there was the sheriffs crimes and then the forcing out of the native groups. The native plot was not fleshed out as much as the sheriff plot and also did not go over well at the speech at the end. I think the author could have split the book and done a spinoff if she wanted to keep both plots.”
Carlyb1805
Created about 2 months agoShare
Report
Jenna 🎻
Created 3 months agoShare
Report
“There was a lot going on here that didn’t need to be going on.
I liked the overall message of the book. I’m not a Dust Bowl expert, though I’ve read about it fairly recently (The Worst Hard Time). The author of The Antidote appears to have done some research and incorporated that into the novel. Still, up until about 80% of the book, I was burnt out on superficial reminders that the book took place during the Dust Bowl. It wasn’t organically shown, but told.
I did not see any purpose to the basketball plot line. It prompted Dell to get a job, sure, but isn’t the Great Depression enough to do that? Her uncle’s magical crops wouldn’t be harvested and profited on for some time. It wouldn’t have been too out there to presume they needed money prior to. Or perhaps she wanted to run away with or do give something to Valeria, whom we didn’t hear nearly enough about, in my opinion. Potentially more cliché than the basketball thing, but it would uncomplicate the plot and leave room to fully flesh out other elements.
And finally, all of the perspectives ended up feeling daunting at times and improperly balanced at others. I found myself wanting more of one person’s perspective, then not getting it…and instead getting way too much from someone else.
TLDR: the message is solid. Could’ve been done better. Worth a read if you are unfamiliar with the Dust Bowl and will benefit from the descriptions that are perhaps over-emphasized or if you just like family/small town drama with a touch of magic.”
Kevin Xu
Created 4 months agoShare
Report
About Karen Russell
KAREN RUSSELL is the author of six books of fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. She is a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She has received two National Magazine Awards for Fiction, the Shirley Jackson Award, the 2023 Bottari Lattes Grinzane Prize, and the 2024 Mary McCarthy Prize, and was selected for the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 award and The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 list (she is now decisively overforty). She serves on the board of Street Books, a mobile library for people living outdoors. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, she lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, son, and daughter.
Other books by Karen Russell
Start a Book Club
Start a public or private book club with this book on the Fable app today!FAQ
Do I have to buy the ebook to participate in a book club?
Why can’t I buy the ebook on the app?
How is Fable’s reader different from Kindle?
Do you sell physical books too?
Are book clubs free to join on Fable?
How do I start a book club with this book on Fable?
Books Similar to The Antidote
Save to a list
0
/30
0
/100
Private List