“I didn’t speak until I was seven. I
didn’t feel the need,” May tells us on
page one of
How To Survive A Natural
Disaster, a story of family rivalry,
betrayal, violence, and forgiveness told
in six voices. May, the strange, silent
Peruvian orphan who is adopted and
brought to a leafy suburb north of
Chicago at six months old to mend the
lives of an already troubled family,
might not talk, but as her Grandma Jack
observes, “That baby studies people.”
Next, we hear from May’s mother
Roxanne, who hopes a baby and religion
will fix her marriage; May’s father
Craig, an artist who’d rather be anywhere but home until he falls in love
with this strange dark child,April —
May’s beautiful brilliant adored older
sister who wants to be an actress
who appears “to breathe light like some
benign dragon;” Mr. Cosmo, their three-legged Weimaraner; and Phoebe, the
morbidly depressed, morbidly obese, agoraphobic neighbor who is the one who finally must rise to the occasion
when May finds her father's loaded gun hidden under his dirty laundry.
As each voice makes a case for his or
her own side of the story the reader
learns that blood ties aren’t what make a
family and that sometimes survival is
only possible through forgiveness.
MARGARET HAWKINS is a Chicago writer and critic. She had a long-running column in the Chicago Sun-Times, and writes for ARTnews, has written for WBEZ, worked in business, taught art, been an independent curator, and currently teaches writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her first novel, A Year of Cats and Dogs, was published by The Permanent Press in October of 2009.
