Description: "Provocative, beautifully rendered...With this novel, Shields has crafted a clever, fierce parable about the blindness of those entranced by the powers of violence--that those people are mostly men should come as little surprise." -- Nylon , Best Books of February "Balancing thorough research and mythic lyricism, [The Cassandra] is a timely warning of what happens when warnings go unheeded." -- The Millions "Most-Anticipated: The Great First-Half 2019 Book Preview" "[A] galvanizing variation on the ancient Greek tale of a seer doomed always to be right, yet never to be believed. Shields . . . offers satirically comedic scenes and satisfyingly venomous takedowns of the patriarchy, welcome flashes of light in this otherwise harrowing dive into the darkest depths of hubris and apocalyptic destruction. A uniquely audacious approach to the nuclear nightmare." -- Booklist (starred review) "Lyrical. . . Well-researched. . . .Shields' reworking of the classic myth--about a young woman whose warnings about a future she alone can see are ignored--is filled with grotesque and violent images and episodes of keening sorrow. Shields delivers what her heroine cannot: a warning, impossible to ignore, about the costs of blind adherence to ideology." --Kirkus "[An] alluring, phantasmagoric story. . . .With a plucky, charismatic narrator and vivid scenes incorporating the history of a real WWII facility, Shield's novel digs into the destructive arrogance of war." -- Publishers Weekly " The Cassandra is a magnificent exploration of the consequences--both incredible and devastating--of human ingenuity and human intuition. This novel is full of magic and hope, even while it brings up to the light some of our darkest past." --Ramona Ausubel, author of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty and Awayland " The Cassandra is a fantastic achievement of unflinching honesty, psychic power, and sustained empathy. Sharma Shields's fearless reckoning with American might at the beginning of the nuclear age closes the distance between victor and victim, historical detail and mythic truth. This fevered novel's seer will infect you with her visions, but her moral candor will work on you long after the dream is over." --Smith Henderson, author of Fourth of July Creek " The Cassandra feels powerfully--chillingly--relevant to our own political moment, even as it unfolds against the bleak splendor of the 1940s American West. It's a harrowing story, beautifully told, of patriarchy and violence intertwining to make a combustible monster; and of the woman who speaks the truth about this monster, only to be dismissed as unhinged." --Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks "A stunning fable of hubris, complicity, and nuclear genesis, set against the raw backdrop of the wartime northwest. Sharma Shields illuminates the grotesquerie of humanity's progress and offers up an elegy for a damned world." --Megan Kruse, author of Call Me Home "Sharma Shields is one of our finest literary fabulists and The Cassandra is further proof - a brilliantly tightening knot of dread, a phantasmagoria of nightmares and daytime horrors that glows with powerful insights about the nation's reckless nuclear history and its corrosive chauvinism." --Shawn Vestal, author of Godforsaken Idaho

Please Wait