Saturday, July 21, 2018

What is Ruthanna Emrys reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Ruthanna Emrys, author of Deep Roots.

Her entry begins:
I’ve just started Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars, in which a dinosaur-level asteroid impact on Washington DC in 1952 kicks off a no-holds-barred program to colonize space. The opening made me cry about five times—it probably didn’t help that I was reading it on the DC metro. It perfectly captures the weirdness of how people respond to crises. The protagonist is Jewish, and about the same level of observant that I am; there’s this point where she’s finally made it to safety, and found a place to stay, and her generous, well-meaning hosts offer her eggs cooked in bacon grease and of course you can’t say anything… Kowal gets the way trivial things push you over the edge in the middle of world-shaking events. The rest of the book is...[read on]
About Deep Roots, from the publisher:
Ruthanna Emrys’ Innsmouth Legacy, which began with Winter Tide and continues with Deep Roots, confronts H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos head-on, boldly upturning his fear of the unknown with a heart-warming story of found family, acceptance, and perseverance in the face of human cruelty and the cosmic apathy of the universe. Emrys brings together a family of outsiders, bridging the gaps between the many people marginalized by the homogenizing pressure of 1940s America.

Aphra Marsh, descendant of the People of the Water, has survived Deep One internment camps and made a grudging peace with the government that destroyed her home and exterminated her people on land. Deep Roots continues Aphra’s journey to rebuild her life and family on land, as she tracks down long-lost relatives. She must repopulate Innsmouth or risk seeing it torn down by greedy developers, but as she searches she discovers that people have been going missing. She will have to unravel the mystery, or risk seeing her way of life slip away.
Visit Ruthanna Emrys's website.

The Page 69 Test: Deep Roots.

Writers Read: Ruthanna Emrys.

--Marshal Zeringue