Mobility

Kiesling (The Golden State) takes on the global petroleum industry in this politically astute novel. Fifteen-year-old Elizabeth “Bunny” Glenn is the daughter of an American diplomat in newly independent Azerbaijan in 1998, with a front-row seat to the geopolitical scrambling underway for the nation’s vast oil reserves. Fast-forward a decade and Bunny lands in East Texas with her divorced mother, after her father ends the marriage while on an overseas assignment. As Bunny makes her own way in Texas, she’s galled by her mother’s reminders of the opportunities afforded her by her well-to-do upbringing. She eventually finds a job in the renewable energy branch of oil company Turnbridge, and shakes off her vague unease at joining the fossil fuel industry by “pushing the energy side, the futurecasting side” of her work. The story then sast-forwards to 2051, when natural disasters plague the planet and oil and gas companies have “destabilized nations,” and Bunny still rationalizes her prior work with Turnbridge as being energy-focused. Kiesling brilliantly captures the swashbuckling arrogance and louche misbehavior of Americans pushing capitalism abroad (where the smell of oil is “the smell of money”), and the consequences of Bunny’s choices are clearly drawn and factually sound. The result is an impressively original contribution to the emerging literature of climate change. (Aug.)