NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF PRINCE WERE ALIVE

As Hurricane Matthew sweeps toward Savannah, Georgia, a woman’s life begin to fall apart.

Ramona, 38, is wife to Desmond, mother to 7-year-old Alex and 3-year-old Nanette, daughter of Adelaide, and employee of Kenneth of the too-tight trousers. She is also a fan of Prince and a one-time painter and art student. Ramona has a cleareyed view of everyone around her, seeing them as entire people with parts she loves (well, for family and friends) and parts she doesn’t. With an evacuation order looming, she rushes from work to pick up her daughter from her friend/babysitter’s house because she can’t get a hold of her husband. When she arrives home with Nanette in tow, she finds a fellow mom standing in front of the fridge drinking the last coconut La Croix, and then her husband appears in his boxers. Clearly, the pair are post-coitus. The story follows Ramona’s efforts to get her kids and mother evacuated to safety as the storm bears down on them, fending off calls from her husband and the fellow mom as she tries to buy time to figure out what went wrong with her marriage and how she feels about it. This story is told episodically, with Ramona’s memories of past experiences, moments, and Prince songs interspersed with a timeline of her evacuation efforts. Author Prusa does a very good job of presenting all the stress of potty training a toddler while managing their outrageous behavior; convincing a cantankerous senior mother to do something (that is, evacuate) when she doesn’t want to; managing a boss’s unreasonable expectations during a natural disaster; and trying to create an outward sense of calm and safety for others when inner turmoil is almost out of control.

A story that explores how individual identity and happiness can be unintentionally misplaced in marriage and motherhood.