“A Catalog Of Burnt Objects” ($19.99 in hardcover from Dial Books; also for Amazon Kindle) imagines Sierra, a kind of “twin town” to Paradise, “one whose disaster I witnessed from afar, and one whose disaster I lived through, navigating alongside my characters.” Youngdahl (shanayoungdahl.com) was in Maine at the time, and now lives with her family in Missouri where she teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at Lindenwood University.
Cappi and her family welcome back brother Beckett from a four-month stint in rehab. Beck is a kind of “agent of chaos” for Cappi. Yet she sees his loneliness: “Twenty-one, his own best friend unable to even blink a hello.” (Beck had escaped from a truck accident; Mason was on months-long life support at UC Davis Medical.)
Caprice knows loneliness, too; only her Gramps really understands her. He’s living alone, his wife in a care facility in town.
Caprice is working on coding an app to attract folks to Sierra. Her bestie, Alicia, is helping. Enter a young man named River, and Beck is not the only one to see the sparks. “Cappi’s full-on love-zombied, and she just met him,” says Alicia.
The chapters count down, 8 weeks before, 5 weeks before, four hours before. Smoke. Then the conflagration which comes midway in the story. In desperate efforts to escape, Cappi and Beck make a fateful life-and-death decision that haunts the novel. For Cappi, it’s all “if, then.” If, if, if something had been different.
Youngdahl’s description of the aftermath—with “cards” detailing burned remains from the various characters, like a Talking Heads LP, house plants or a piano—are searingly real. So much uncertainty in the days after.
Can there be a better future? Can one imagine “maybe”?
