The Displacements

rotation is counterclockwise. By 4:00 p.m. Gambian time, the satellites have captured enough data to effect a change in status. The system upgrades to a tropical depression, drawing more eyes to weather screens in the Caribbean islands, along the eastern seaboard of the Americas.
 
Five hours later, the depression has matured into a tropical storm. She spins and strengthens until she is hale enough to earn a name.

She is Luna.


2.

She spins and pedals and turns the clay mound until a cylinder rises in her hands. With four fingers in the mouth and a sponge on the shoulder she lightens the walls, creating form. The glaze will be an aquamarine, one of twelve shades Daphne and her Key West client have selected for the installation, a spectrum of blue-green hues inspired by the client's love of the Caribbean Sea. Six finished vessels already line a shelf and gather the sunlight brimming off the lagoon. Today Daphne has been working on the seventh, but each time she pulls, something goes wrong. Too much water, a flinch of the hand. Some unseen flaw in the clay.

She pinches along the neck ring so the mouth floats above the body, creating a slight pressure with only her pinkie engaged, to the edge of what the thickness can withstand. The wall thins, goes thinner still-

Too much, and the neck collapses into the base. She rams the sponge down through the upper walls until a shapeless lump sits on the bat. She pulls it off and slams it into the reclaim bin.
Cricket, alarmed, cranes up from her bed. "It's okay, girl." The beagle mutt lowers her patchy head, brown eyes moist with concern.

Daphne stretches on her stool and breathes in the earthy air of her studio, a high-ceilinged room flooded with light from windows on two sides, so different from the old converted garage back in Ann Arbor, where she belonged to a co-op and relied on a collective kiln. Here she

escape." Tina Jordan, New York Times Book Review

A riveting and humbling reminder of how precarious our lives are in comparison to the power of nature, and a profound glimpse into our near future. Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes

Realistic and immediate, it puts the reader right in the eye of the emotional storm, alongside its characters. As much as this is a wake-up call about the unpredictable nature of weather and life, it is most powerfully a propulsive family drama and a provocative story of human dignity, human indignity, and the deeper meanings of home. Miranda Cowley Heller, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Paper Palace

Bruce Holsinger has written a novel that succeeds in confronting the shocking realities of these times without being either apocalyptic or pessimistic. The Displacements is an urgent, powerful, unputdownable novel, filled with characters that are so vividly drawn that it is impossible not to care about them. A remarkable achievement. Amitav Ghosh, author of Sea of Poppies and The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

Tense, claustrophobic, and all too imaginable. A reminder that disaster doesn t only happen to other people, that in a heartbeat each of us can be put to the test in a desperate search for physical and emotional survival. Holsinger's beautifully drawn characters are made even more human by their relatable vulnerability in this gripping, twisty drama. Diane Chamberlain, New York Times bestselling author of The Last House on the Street


Praise for The Gifted School:

"A page-turning meditation on what it means to be gifted  and how far parents will go to prove it." NPR

"Holsinger s sharp observation, knack for dialogue, acerbic social commentary and droll descriptive gifts all add up to a heady brew. As the adults scheme intently and their beleaguered children act out their frustrations, The Gifted School becomes a sharp, skeptical primer on how things stand in 2010s America where everyone is desperate to get their slice of an ever-shrinking economic pie." The Boston Globe

"A surprisingly hopeful novel. There s a sweetness to its resolution, a satisfying possibility that no matter what monsters we parents are at times, we can still graduate to something better." Ron Charles, The Washington Post
 
"Holsinger renders his helicopter moms and soccer dads so precisely that one understands their motivations, even feels their longing and pride. . . [The Gifted School] exposes how easily a mix of good intentions, self-delusions, and minor sins can escalate into the kind of skullduggery that might prompt an F.B.I. sting." The New Yorker

"Clever and au courant. . . top of the syllabus for book clubs." People

"Bright, and expertly observed." Town & Country

"Wise and addictive... The Gifted School is the juiciest novel I've read in ages... a suspenseful, laugh-out-loud page-turner and an incisive inspection of privilege, race and class. . . .The book goes down as easy as a gin and tonic on a summer day, but the takeaway is damning. In their quest to give their offspring the best, these parents have committed, as one member of the group realizes too late, 'a collective crime against childhood.." J. Courtney Sullivan in The New York Times