Wow! This was a little bit of everything, rolled into a compelling read. Racism…past and present. Loss, grief, violence, corruption, mob-mentality. Gritty and bleak, yet ultimately hopeful.

Karen Russell’s newest, The Antidote, is at times a great book, is at times a befuddling book, and is, in a few instances, a flawed book. The strengths of the book are many: wonderful character creation; the exploration of gravely important themes such as historical erasure, the treatment of Indigenous people, the shaming of women; a healthy dose of magical realism via a magical camera, a sentient scarecrow, and memory-vault “witches”; and wonderfully rich, vivid description. The issues crop up with regard to character presentation, thematic resolution, pacing, and some (to me) odd authorial decision. In the end, the good outweighs the less good, though I found myself wishing the book had more fully met the teasing potential it so often offered.

The book opens (after a horribly vivid prologue involving a mass slaughter of rabbits) with an historical event, the Black Sunday Dust Bowl storm of 1935 as it sweeps over the town of Uz, Nebraska. It will end with an historical event as well, this one involving rain and floods rather than wind and dust. In between the two, an odd group comes together in service of justice both local and universal, both for a single person locked up in prison and an entire peoples erased from the land.

This group is made up of:
The Antidote: the “stage name” for a local prairie witch. These witches act as “memory vaults” — people “deposit” the things they wish to forget with the witch and then can, if they choose to, reclaim the memory at a later date (the witches are in a trance so do not actually remember themselves what they’ve been told). Unfortunately for the Antidote, the Black Sunday storm not only tore away the last thin bit of topsoil that remained but also took with it all her stored memories. Now she fears how the townspeople will react once they learn she’s lost their deposits, in particular, the town’s sadistic, violent sheriff, a “savant at torture.”

Harp Oletsky: a Polish wheat farmer whose land is miraculously untouched by the storm and drought. His farm is the only with wheat, green fields, and somehow, blue sky, something that both mystifies and haunts him.

Asphodel (Dell) Oletsky: Harp’s 15-year-old niece whom he took in after her mother died, allegedly murdered by a serial killer known as the “Lucky Rabbit's Foot Killer” for the mementoes he leaves on the bodies of his victims. She furiously tries to bury her unresolved grief by starring on the local girls’ basketball team and apprenticing herself to the Antidote

Cleo Allfrey: a Black photographer sent out west as part of FDR’s work programs, her job to “make a case for the New Deal” (so long as she shows the “right” people to stoke public support).

We also get three other POV characters: Harp’s father, a sentient scarecrow whose awakening remains a mystery until the very end (though some readers will certainly guess its origin) and a fierce cat seeking vengeance for the drowning of her kittens. Two other “characters” are important though not actively present: a young man scapegoated for the Rabbit’s Foot killings who has already survived one failed execution attempt and awaits another and the Native Americans (particularly the Pawnee) who lived on the land before being forcibly removed.

The story moves in a semi-linear fashion. Moving forward we have The Antidote and Dell concocting false memory deposits to feed back to The Antidote’s customers, the revelations about the serial killings and the sheriff’s corrupt malevolence, the responses of the town to the ongoing environmental crisis, the mysteries surrounding the sentient scarecrow’s growing self-awareness and Harp’s fertile land, and the discovery by Cleo that a used camera she picked up takes Twilight Zone-like photographs — other times? Other universes?

In between we get a number of flashbacks. One involves The Antidote’s youth when she got pregnant at fifteen and then was sentenced to the abusive Milford Industrial Home for unwed pregnant women (mostly girls), where she gives birth, only to be told her son died that night. She refuses to believe it though, and in fact directs her POV directly to her son, hoping he will find her someday. Through The Antidote’s recollections, we also get the story of Zintkala Nuni, whom The Antidote met at the Home. Zintkala (an actual historical personage) was an infant survivor of Wounded Knee, stolen from her people by a White general, though she eventually ran away. In her time before Milford, she’d been at the Chemawa Indian boarding school, where the students were forbidden their language, dress, and culture, and also worked at a Wild West show. And finally we get a lengthy POV via deposited memory of how Harp’s father had emigrated from Poland in hopes of a better life in America.

The plot therefore is a bit scattered, more an accretion of scenes than a straightforward narrative, and sometimes the structural underpinning or balance seems to slip, leading to some pacing issues and my questioning some of the scenes included (for instance, I’m not sure I needed so much on Asphodel’s basketball team). Some plotlines, such as the unsolved murders, are somewhat abruptly dropped, while others like Harp’s father’s section feel overly long and too “exposition-y.” The same problems arise with a speech Harp gives at the end.

The characters are similarly unbalanced. The Antidote is a fantastic creation, richly characterized across her spectrum of experiences and emotions. Asphodel is also a strong character, whether she is grieving her mother’s murder, trying to find her place in the world, acting as captain for her team, or taking the first tentative steps into love with one of her teammates. Harp is a fine character, a good man who comes to a worthy epiphany, warm and gentle, and it’s a pleasure to see him start to move out of his loneliness, though he pales a bit beside the two women. Cleo comes into the story late, so it’s harder to engage with her, but she also feels like a missed opportunity, with all her cultural/ethnic edges sanded off. Beyond a few scattered references, there’s little sense of her as a Black woman during a deeply segregated and patriarchal decade. FDR’s work programs certainly gave new opportunity to both women and African Americans in the arts, but that’s not to say such opportunity were not remarked upon or always welcome. The same sense of an ahistorical nature hovers over Dell’s queer relationship in that there seems to be little sense of this being unusual or stigmatized at the time.

Thematically, The Antidote explores a number of issues, most predominantly the genocide of Native Americans and the theft of their land, both of which Russell makes clear were calculated acts, not tragic accidents or ripple effects. The “Indian School” where students were forcibly removed from their homes so their culture could be brutally ripped away is one example, as is the time when a group of tourists fire a long-lasting volley from their train at a nearby bison herd, with one yelling, “Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone!” The aforementioned memory from Harp’s father also highlights the issue, with obvious parallels drawn between Prussia’s treatment of the Poles (stealing their land, forcing them to relocate, forbidding their language) and America’s treatment of its Indigenous people.

Left at that, the echo might be a bit too ham-handed, but the point here is more subtle and speaks to another theme in the book, that the “evil this world runs on” is “Better you than me.” This is driven home to Harp’s father immediately on his arrival, when he realizes:

“The Yankees called us a dozen slurs … our inferiority was assumed… A Polack is stupid and coarse and lazy and drunk … My skin is the color an unwashed onion. In America, this placed me ahead of many. On a low rung of the ladder, but higher than the Black porter … I heard the ticking pulse of a new relief: not me, not me not me, Andrew Dawson [their Black porter] — better you than me.”

And step by step, over the years, he at first feels bad about what is being done to the Native population of Nebraska, then he stops thinking about it, then he starts to take an active hand in their displacement. As does his wife, who takes a job at the Indian boarding school, and though appalled by the horrors she sees there, remains for the paycheck.

Complicity, even if less active, raises its head in The Antidote’s memories as well, as she has her eyes opened by her friend Zintkala:

I hadn’t known — no one had ever told me — that I was a soldier in a war. We newcomers to the Great Plains were invited out here by the US government to hold ground. The Homestead Act, the Dawes Act all part of a battle plan. Over time, light-skinned children would grow old in this West with … no awareness that they were the daughter and the sones of an invading army … Our lives were entangled in the same song … I was a weapon in the war. I am one. I am in Zintka’s story, as she is in mine.”

The treatment of African Americans and women is also addressed. The Home for unwed mothers and its terrible abusive practices is one clear example. As is the generally blasé response to the murdered women (“Women were always going missing. That was a fact of life throughout the howling world”), though unsurprisingly when a few white middle-class women are killed the authorities take more notice and action. Meanwhile, when Cleo sends in pictures of Black people, her supervisor writes back: “In the future, please be judicious about who you frame up. Photographs of White farmers will have much better odds of being circulated.”

The main problem I had with the themes was not in their exploration but their resolution, or non-resolution. Obviously, historical guilt/responsibility is a complex issue, but when it boils down to “we need to do better” or the suggestion of a brainstorming session, and then even that topic gets interrupted by another weather event, it’s more than a little unsatisfying. But I don’t want to go into much detail as this all occurs toward the end.

Other elements were more fully successful. The metaphor of the purposeful erasure of memory via the prairie witches and how America for so long and so often refused (refuses) to acknowledge the truth of its past actions. The dust storm as a metaphor for long buried injustice come for those who profited from that injustice even as they refused to admit that. The actual historic photos that are inserted throughout the text, with the punched-out holes from the editors who rejected them, emblematic of the hole at the center of the told history and of the refusal to accept those considered not “the right people” to pay attention to. The magical realism elements like the magic camera showing what was and perhaps what could be or the poetic scarecrow (some of my favorite segments of the book). The way the town name works on two levels. One as the Biblical name for the land of Job, a man who had everything taken from him and then had it restored (unlike the Pawnee). But more aptly for me the connections with the Land of Oz. We’re in a plain state, we have a young girl protagonist, an unexpected group coming together to pull aside the curtain and reveal truth, a scarecrow, a feisty animal (a cat rather than Toto), and via the camera, the possibility of other times/other lands. And then there is Russell’s prose, which is so often so gorgeous.

The issue noted above nagged a bit throughout the book and unfortunately, marred the ending in particular, which felts paradoxically both overly long and rushed. But the book is still an easy recommendation despite those problems, thanks to its many strengths.

@aaknopf | #partner What to say, what to say? I have many thoughts on 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗔𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗗𝗢𝗧𝗘 by Karen Russell, but want to keep it simple. To begin, this is a story that takes place in Nebraska during the dust bowl era. It’s sandwiched between two real weather events, a massive dust storm and an historic rain storm. The events are several months apart and during that time we get to know well the four main characters who populate this story. I’m not going to tell you about each, but will say that they’re tightly connected and become more and more so as the story goes on. I liked each one well enough.⁣
⁣
𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘥𝘰𝘵𝘦 is more than historical fiction. It also has a big dose of magical realism which added a lot to the story. I absolutely adored the last third of this book. I loved the way Russell told it, I was impressed with how she tied everything together, and most of all I was moved by the message the ending of this book delivered. ⁣
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What I didn’t like was how long it took to get to that ending. The first two thirds of the book I alternated between being engaged with the story and finding it tedious. Of the two, tedious won out. I considered DNFing more than once and I did skim in parts, but something compelled me to keep going. I’m glad I stuck it out for that powerful, important ending even though the overall reading experience was not what I’d hoped. ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

This was my first book by this author and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. This book is quite the chunker so I was a little intimidated at first but I was very quickly transported into the story.

This historical fiction novel is told in multi POV and is truly a remarkable novel. The way these characters lives are intertwined was so interesting to experience. My favorite character was The Prairie Witch.

I will definitely be reading more from this author because this book hooked me and I never expected it.

Karen Russell does what she has done previously, but in wholly new ways. Uncovering an essential nugget of a foundational American period and examining it's positives and negatives (sadly, mostly negatives). We follow a prairie witch named the Antidote, a deep pit of memory that allows people to forget whatever memories they choose. She explores this to great effect, highlighting the many benefits before swiftly bashing over the head with the myriad issues. We also follow an uncle and niece, a family recently brought together by a vicious string of murders. All of them are residents of the town of Uz, Nebraska. A town slowly dying during the dust bowl of the Great Depression. Swirl these up and add in the corrupt sheriff and we have the making of our touching, and poignant novel.

The novel captures an era of American history that I knew nothing about: the story is nestled between two major climate events - the Black Sunday Dust Storm and the Republican River Flood. The book is filled with an eclectic cast of characters: a prairie witch called the Antidote, who can act as a vault for people's memories, which they can later debit; Harp Oletsky (a Polish farmer) and his defiant but lovable niece, Asphodel, who signs up to become the Antidote’s apprentice; Cleo Allfrey, a photographer who stumbles upon a camera that can take quantum pictures - pictures that reveal the past and future; a sentient scarecrow; a vengeful cat; and a twisted sheriff. In the aftermath of the Dust Bowl, the photographs Cleo captures and the memories stored in the vaults begin to uncover dark secrets not just about present-day events, but also about how the town was founded and the hidden truths behind its establishment - secrets the community is ill-prepared to face. This mounting tension ignites the action that drives the story forward. While the book excels at painting vivid, evocative portraits of the Dust Bowl, the dust storms, and the sweeping prairies, it truly shines in weaving together its eclectic cast of characters, culminating in a breathtaking, hopeful finale.

The book explores the heavy burden of memories, showing how, in their quest for self-preservation, people may choose to bury their pasts - only to have those dark, unresolved memories inevitably resurface and haunt them. It also explores how settlers/colonizers drove Native Indians from their lands through treachery, violence, and fraud, and coerced them into assimilation by stripping them of their Indian roots. The book shows how everything is connected: the ripple effects of drought-like conditions and intense soil erosion stem from the fact that Native Americans, who knew how to care for the land, were driven out. It explores the settler mentality, showing how seemingly "small" prejudices and rumors can lead to far-reaching consequences.

There are also parallel threads about the Antidote’s grief over having her son stolen at a school for “unwed mothers”, Asphodel finding hope and community in basketball amidst the death of her mother, Cleo finding her own voice in her photography - especially as a Black woman during a time when racial segregation was still rampant, even in integrated communities - and Harp making sense of his fortune (his land being unscathed) while his neighbors reel from the crushing damages of the Dust Bowl. The novel also explores the fickleness of the justice system, mob mentality, and the hypocrisy of “religious people.” The book manages to tackle all these seemingly disparate threads with aplomb.

The book also includes an author’s note and historical context at the end, shedding light on the real people and events that inspired the narrative - an insight I found incredibly valuable. I absolutely loved this book, and it will undoubtedly be one of my favorites of the year.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author (Karen Russell), and the publisher (Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Knopf) for an advanced copy. Thoughts and review are completely my own.

There are so many parts of this book that seem made just for me; I’ve always been fascinated by the Dust Bowl, by the stories of Eastern European immigrants, by history’s women, by a touch of fantasy or magical realism, and, most of all, by the many different stories and lenses by which we view the American West.

The Antidote has this all in spades. I was drawn in immediately by the setting, by the mystery, by the description and by the Prairie Witch, her apprentice, and the myriad of alluring characters that populate the town of Uz, Nebraska.

If I had to assert any criticism, it would be that the true narrative of The Antidote is difficult to describe. I would recommend this novel in a heartbeat but am currently struggling to explain why. While the blurb is thorough, it’s hard to convey without the context of the book exactly why it feels so meaningful. If it comes to me, I will update. In the meantime, thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for the ARC!

The Antidote by Karen Russell is such a gorgeous and thought-provoking novel. I now want to read all of Russell's backlist. I loved the various characters that Russell developed, and it's an era of history that is underrepresented.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and narrator for sharing this book with me.

Five stars because it’s breathtakingly ambitious and altogether remarkable, not because it’s perfect. This review appears in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Magical realism meets the gritty reality of Dust Bowl Nebraska in “The Antidote,” Karen Russell’s epic, character-driven historical mystery about a “prairie witch” and her protege.

Got all that? It’s only a fraction of the whole of “The Antidote,” which fights being summarized in the way many ambitious novels do.

The story spins out from “Black Sunday,” April 14, 1935, the day of the worst dust storm of the era in which drought met the Great Depression, costing farmers their topsoil, their crops and their lives.

The (fictional) town of Uz, Nebraska — the name is an homage to the biblical book of Job — struggles on. But although self-inflicted, dust-driven hardship is the backdrop, “The Antidote” tells an unexpected and exhilarating tale of people you’ve never met before doing things you can hardly imagine.

Russell, who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for 2011’s “Swamplandia!,” first introduces us to the prairie witch, a calling and career detailed so meticulously that I was sure it was part of myth and legend, but apparently springs from Russell’s imagination.

The witch, whose name we only learn later, is alternately and more aptly described as a Vault — people pay to deposit their darkest secrets with her, clearing their consciences and lightening their loads. This one has taken the name the Antidote, with a sign in gold calligraphy advertising her services “as a panacea for every ailment from heartburn to nightmares.”

The depositors go away with a receipt allowing them to retrieve those memories on demand. But when the prairie witch awakens on Black Sunday, she is empty. All those others’ stored memories are gone.

Russell tells the ensuing story in chapters headlined by the tellers. In addition to the prairie witch, there are Asphodel “Del” Oletsky, an orphaned teenager and aspiring basketball champion determined to learn from the witch; her bachelor uncle, Harp Oletsky, “the dry land farmer,” confused by his crop’s improbable success in the midst of his neighbors’ disasters; and Cleo Allfrey, a Black photographer sent by the federal government to document the disaster on the Great Plains, and the ways the government is helping.

There are also an alleged serial killer, an evil sheriff, a sentient scarecrow, a magical camera and a cat out for revenge, plus flashbacks to an unwed mothers home where the witch (then just 15-year-old Toni) gave birth to a boy who was stolen from her. Her chapters are addressed to “Son.”

Weighty in size at 432 pages and sometimes grim in subject (trigger warning for graphic animal and human deaths), “The Antidote” is somehow still charming and lyrical, full of beautiful descriptions and dosed with dry humor.

But Russell may ultimately be too ambitious for her story’s good. A long digression into the experiences of Harp Oletsky’s father, a Polish immigrant to Nebraska in the late 1800s , makes important points about the great cruelty of westward expansion, when the government used land giveaways “to turn ‘wasteland’ into profit, to transform grassland into steaks and leather and wheat for export. To turn Native lands into White ones.”

Oletsky Sr.’s story, clearly one Russell wants to tell, could be the foundation of its own book, and a good one. But arriving midway through this one, when readers are already invested in so many other urgent, sprawling storylines, the history lesson feels distracting and even preachy.

“The Antidote” winds up explosively, if messily, with satisfying resolutions almost all around. A day after finishing it, there is a lot I still couldn’t explain. But there’s also a lot I’ll never forget.

Russell is a witch and I’m under her spell. The Antidote was an extremely ambitious undertaking, a literary assemblage artwork, and I think Russell managed to pull it off. The novel features many components and backstories that, initially, seemed disconnected. While some themes were readily apparent, I wasn’t sure where everything was going until very near the end. The slow build and the backstories served their purpose well though. Russell’s skill in seamlessly weaving together these disparate elements and powerfully conveying her messages was truly a marvel. If I had to nitpick, I would have preferred some more nuances to the personalities and for them to have had a greater impact on the story’s unfolding. However, this in no way diminished my enjoyment of the novel. Even though it's set in the Dust Bowl era, Russell's messages about the importance of remembering history and our collective memories feel really timely, and those glimmers of hope are definitely appreciated.

I went into reading The Antidote, knowing that regardless of the narrative, Karen Russell would cast a spell with her language and imagination, and I was not disappointed. The story takes place in Nebraska during the 1930s Dust Bowl era and has many intriguing characters to follow. The events in the story are interesting, but the way Russell depicts a scene or feeling with lyricism and beauty makes the book exceptional. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

#TheAntidote

Karen Russell's "The Antidote" continues to showcase her mastery of magical realism through a captivating blend of the fantastic and the deeply human. I didn't think I would enjoy a book about the Dust Bowl so much, but I did! I love Russell's short stories and the same strangeness that she brings to those she brought to The Antidote. Her ability to balance whimsy with emotional depth is one of my favorite things about her writing.

Thanks to Netgalley for an Advanced copy to read and review. I enjoyed the historical fiction aspects, the writing was compelling and informative, and the magical/fantasy aspects made the content even more interesting. I struggled initially with the shifting perspectives telling the story but once I made it through a few chapters, I was able to follow the story along the multiple perspectives. I thought the book shared a lot of needed, honest insights into what happened in our history, as well as giving our potential futures a story and voice. The topics covered, such as collective shame, rectification, and the reflection on our communal violence, genocide and colonial tendencies are worthy of the attention given in this novel. It covered A LOT, which was both good and overwhelming, but I felt the author ultimately pulled it all together, although it took until about 3/4 of the way through the novel to really get there. I liked the novel more once I had finished, as I did have to push through certain sections. Thank you again NetGalley!

Courtesy of Netgalley, I received the ARC of The Antidote by Karen Russell. This well researched epic saga of Nebraska during the Depression and the Dust Bowl encompasses more than history. By looking at the Homesteaders and their descendants, dispossessed of their European land and heritage, and comparing it to the plight of the Indians who were stewards of the land, Russell reveals an uncomfortable picture. With five fictional characters interspersed with historical people, the importance of family, memories, and connections to the earth emerges. Phrases that describe the landscape are beautiful and mesmerizing.. And there is a witch and a supernatural component to this important narrative! I was transfixed!

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the arc!

The Antidote is a haunting, magical realist novel set in Dust Bowl era Nebraska. Through five intertwined characters, it explores memory, trauma, and environmental collapse with lyrical prose and imaginative depth.

I really wanted to love this book. I can appreciate the writing and the story is super imaginative, but honestly, it just didn’t click for me. I had a hard time getting into it, and with so many POVs, I kept losing track of the story. The only character who really grabbed me was the Prairie Witch.

DNF@ 24%

I was interested at first, but I lost interest at around 20% of the way through. I don't care about most of the characters. And the story seems to be all over the place.

Set in the Depression era, during a dust storm in Nebraska, this is a beautifully written story that weaves together the lives of several characters. I really enjoyed large parts of this book but felt that the pacing was a bit off at times and that detracted from the overall story. All in all, a good book that many will enjoy. Thank you to NetGalley for a chance to read and review this book.

I kept having to stop mid sentence as I read Karen Russell's long-awaited new novel The Antidote, stunned by a tremendous turn of phrase, wowed by her incredible ability to craft a thought. A fascinating, challenging, whirlwind of a novel whose ending blew me away.

The Antidote is a stunning blend of historical fiction and magical realism that transports us to Uz, Nebraska during the 1930s Dust Bowl era. We follow a prairie witch who can act as a vault for people’s memories, a Polish farmer and his basketball-obsessed niece, a photographer with an enchanted camera, and a sentient scarecrow as they grapple with their town’s dark past. Russell seamlessly weaves the stories of these unforgettable characters together to craft a sweeping tale about memory, reckoning with our history, and working together to build a way forward. Timely, thought-provoking, and beautifully written.

The writing is superb, which is what I loved about Karen Russell from the beginning. The magical realism, however, has fallen out of favor with me as a motif. Other than the Latin American "Boom" novelists of the 60s and 70s, the only successful usage I've found in more recent memory is W.P. Kinsella's "Shoeless Joe," perhaps better known by its film adaptation, "Field of Dreams." "The Antidote" is quite good, though not great. Then again, as a wise person once said, "only an average writer can always be at their best."