The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth

In this searching meditation, Brown University writing teacher Rush (Rising) reflects on accompanying a 2019 research expedition to Thwaites, “Antarctica’s most important and least understood glacier,” as part of the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic writers program. She describes how the scientists and crew onboard the research vessel cope with heavy storms while analyzing samples of seafloor sediment and measurements taken by underwater gliders to understand how rising water temperatures are hastening the melting of “the widest glacier in the world.” Amid the alarming science, Rush ruminates on the “ethics of bringing more people into the world,” discussing her own desire to conceive in spite of anxieties about the planet’s future. Rush also includes extensive interviews with her shipmates in which they expound on the vicissitudes of conducting research at the bottom of the world (“Persistent uncertainty is something you get used to,” says one marine geophysicist) and how they decided to have or not have children. Rush’s reporting is top-notch, and her personal reflections make this an unusually intimate account of climate change. Readers will find plenty to ponder. Agent: Julia Lord, Julia Lord Literary Management. (Aug.)