Nightshining: A Memoir in Four Floods

Science writer Kabat (The Eighth Moon) examines grief, government secrets, and meteorological manipulation in this elegant and layered account. What begins as an examination of a flood in Kabat’s town of Margaretville, N.Y., gradually branches into several narrative threads. After dealing with the damage to her property, Kabat learned that Margaretville had a history of severe weather, due in part to a 1950s General Electric experiment led by Kurt Vonnegut’s older brother, Bernard, a chemist who sought to alter weather patterns and make snow, which disrupted the region’s ecosystem for decades. While chasing that lead, Kabat reckoned with the recent death of her father, an environmental scientist whose research informed her own writings. Combining lyrical prose (“All that smoke and war here. It feels like a portent, or a palimpsest whose traces you can read in this place”), interviews with Margaretville residents, and a robust portrait of Vonnegut and his research partners, Kabat interrogates humankind’s need for control, its impacts on the climate, and her family’s legacy of environmental work. This will enchant nature lovers. Photos. (May)