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A Novel
by Karen Russell
Book Reviewed by:From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove Karen Russell: a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town.
The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch," whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples' memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch's apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town's secrets and its fate.
Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation's forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.
Time Magazine 100 Must Reads for 2025
...k club here, and 2 just because. Of those listed, probably my favorite was https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/4966/the-antidote The Antidote by Karen Russell followed by https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/4966/the-antidote The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong.
-kim.kovacs
2025 National Book Awards Finalists Announced
...oks besides the ones I put on my personal list. But often I'm completely unfamiliar with those that end up being nominated for awards. I've only read The Antidote by Karen Russell, which I thought was excellent, and I've got A Guardian and a Thief coming up soon for review. The only other book I've heard of is Omar El Akkad's O...
-kim.kovacs
Overall, what did you think of Before Dorothy, and to what audience would you recommend it? (no spoilers, please!)
...would not have finished this one. INSTEAD – for a truly imaginative, breathtaking, fantastically researched novel on the Dust Bowl era – PLEASE READ The Antidote by Karen Russell! What a contrast!
-Michelle_H
What are you reading this week? (5/8/2025)
I just finished listening to Pam Jenoff's Last Twighlight in Paris, and slowly making my way to the end of the sprawling drama of The Antidote by Karen Russell. Once finished, I plan to begin reading Playground by Richard Power. I'm also reading The Busybody Book Club by Freya Sampson to review.
-Sunny
Thoughts on The Antidote by Karen Russell (spoilers!)
I liked it but there were parts that didn't work well for me. it was the ending that made it worthwhile. I suspect I will always love Karen Russell's Swamplandia best.
-Anne_Glasgow
What book or books are you reading this week? (02/06/2025)
Carys Davis' Clear , Karen Russell's Antidote , listening to Louise Penny's The Madness of Crowds Love them all!
-Nancy_B
What book or books are you reading this week? (01/30/2025)
Just about finished with "The Briar Club" by Kate Quinn. It's a long read, I am enjoying it immensely. Next is "The Antidote" by Karen Russell (ARC book)
-Ruth_Hollandsworth
It's a captivating story; part of the fun of the novel is seeing how Russell ties the plotlines together, and the satisfying way she does so is a wonder to behold... Russell explores not only environmental issues, but racism, the displacement of Native Americans by government-sponsored settlers, the perceived role of women in 1930s America, and much more...continued
Full Review
(714 words)
(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
Dinaw Mengestu, author of Someone Like Us
With The Antidote, Karen Russell proves once again that there is no limit to her extraordinary imagination. She creates marvels out of what we imagine to be the ordinary world, she turns the historical novel upside down and shakes from it a thing of exquisite beauty that is unlike anything you've ever read. Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!
Only Karen Russell could write a dust bowl opus with such raucous brio. Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds
Achingly gorgeous... this book is as profound as it is wonderfully strange. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars
Here in The Antidote, Karen Russel has summoned her singular brand of alchemy and created an epic of heart and devastation, community and laughter, death and life. A book that has it all. An absolute wonder. Rivka Galchen, author of Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch
Every page is pocked with joy, beauty, wildness and the perfect wisdom of mystery. Tommy Orange, author of Wandering Stars
This novel swept me up and carried me away.
One of the protagonists in The Antidote is Cleo Allfrey, a photographer dispatched by the Resettlement Administration to document life in Nebraska's Dust Bowl. She and others in the book mention a similar, real-world project: a documentary titled The Plow That Broke the Plains.
The Plow That Broke the Plains was a controversial, federally funded film that explored the causes behind the Dust Bowl. In the time of the booming demand for grain during and right after World War I, Midwestern farmers looked for ways to improve their land's yield. In the Great Plains in particular—a grassland prairie ecosystem that stretches across the middle part of the United States—one method was to plow up native grasses so more wheat could ...
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