Displacements

On the surface, the Larsen-Hall family has it all: children in good health, a steady marriage, a well-paid position for Brantley, and enough money for Daphne to devote herself fully to her painting. Just as their upscale life in Miami finally feels settled, Luna arrives. It is the first hurricane ever rated category 6, and it leaves their certainties in ruins.

The storm's landfall sets off a second disaster. Their house is destroyed, two members of the family are missing, and their money stops flowing. Everything they have assumed about their future is suddenly open to question. Carried along by a huge crowd of evacuees from across the American South, they wind up hundreds of miles away in a FEMA megashelter. Their fellow residents include a former insurance agent who now sells drugs, a group of vulnerable children, and a relief worker struggling to keep order.

The novel asks whether anything like normal life can return. Told as a tense story across a wide national landscape, it looks at what happens when privilege is taken away and how people endure under pressure in a fast-changing age.