WHEN NORTH BECOMES SOUTH

A superstorm switches Earth’s magnetic poles and shuts down electrical power grids all over the world in this novel by Bronson, author of A Life Well-Lived (2018).

Laurie is the mother of two grown sons , and she feels “smothered by the familiarity” of day-to-day life as an empty nester. Accustomed to a lifestyle powered by “smart”devices, Laurie worries that her teaching job will eventually be made obsolete by technology. Halfway around the globe, Laurie’s eldest son, Brendan, teaches high schoolers in the (fictional) West African country of Loscoaya. Life there is “less complicated in many ways” because residents don’t depend on any sort of tech; however, Brendan knows well that “simple” doesn’t mean “easy.” Meanwhile, his younger brother, Josh, has hit rock bottom after running away from home years ago in an effort to forget a childhood trauma, and he wanders the Western United States. When Brendan comes back from Africa, he discovers that Laurie has fallen prey to a conspiracy theory that the world’s power will soon go out due to a magnetic shift in the poles. Disgusted by his parents’ hoarding of goods to prepare for an alleged apocalypse, Brendan notes that it will take more than canned goods to survive in a world without power—it will take drastic action and long-term adaptation to the environment, as the people of Loscoaya have done. Inevitably, when the superstorm arrives, there are things that even survivalists aren’t prepared for. Bronson manages to give the proceedings a sense of eerie familiarity, which has the effect of making her story utterly magnetic. Over the course of this book, there are a few instances of formulaic dialogue here and there, but the author also provides a number of details that will hit readers close to home in a narrative that takes place in what is essentially a thinly veiled version of our own everyday reality—complete with pandemics, border disputes, and an omnipresent media. As if to emphasize this point, Bronson makes this even clearer with the words of one of her characters: “This is not science fiction. This is real.”

An engaging triptych on the subjects of borders, climate change, and technology dependence.