OVER BROOKLYN HILLS

In the near future, the Berkshires weather a strain on resources resulting from climate displacement in Guenette’s ecological novel.

It’s now 2035 in the third book of the author’s Steep Climes quartet. This novel follows a large cast of characters in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, as they deal with an influx of tourists and “climate refugees” (read: “Brooklyn hipsters” traveling to the mountains to beat the heat). It’s troubling that hikers on the Appalachian Trail are arriving earlier in the season; the town simply isn’t ready for the throngs of New Yorkers who descend on the Berkshires during a scorching heat wave that July and August. The residents must respond to the high demand for vacation rentals, food, and space as crowds of tent-dwelling urbanites (“They’re sleeping on the sidewalks!”) arrive. The novel tracks the tensions between local policymakers, NIMBY protesters against housing expansion, and struggling workers who must meet rising rent costs or else be forced to live in tents. Davin Caine, a septuagenarian artist and homeowner in Great Barrington, rents out parts of his house to various boarders to pay the bills while investigating what—or who—is taking radishes from his garden. The expansive cast of characters also includes a journalist getting the scoop on dark money funding climate denialism, the town manager looking into mysterious gunshots while recovering from a messy split with her husband, and an online newspaper entrepreneur hoping to expand her business. Guenette’s attention to the ways in which climate change may affect communities at the local level makes for a compelling read, and the writing is zippy and clean. The author struggles somewhat with the difficult job of balancing several different stories, and some plot points fall to the wayside. Going beyond local concerns, Guenette also includes chapters about an eco-terrorist organization in cahoots with Mexican drug cartels, a narrative that warrants its own, dedicated novel.

A few too many ideas prove distracting in this otherwise prescient and compelling near-future climate exploration.