CHURN

In Seim’s debut literary novel, two siblings are irrevocably changed by a near-drowning experience.

Jordan and her brother, Chung, live with their parents on a struggling Kansas farm that seems primarily composed of muddy fields and packs of barn cats. Neglected by their alcoholic father and resentment-filled mother—who often come to blows—the siblings are mostly left to raise themselves. During an ill-fated trip to a lakeside campground that results in their parents’ arrest for fighting, Jordan and Chung swim into the water and are sucked under by a whirlpool. After an otherworldly experience on the lakebed, Jordan manages to pull Chung back to the surface and to shore. They’re sent home with their grandparents and return to school the next day, only to realize that they’re no longer the same kids who went into the lake. Jordan now breathes smoke when she’s angry. Chung, when overwhelmed, drops to the ground and flops around like a fish. With these peculiar new features, the siblings face their parents’ separation, their father’s attempt at recovery, a move to a new apartment in a nearby city, new friends, and, as they grow older, first loves and first big losses. Through their ever whirling grief, Jordan and Chung are always circling one another, discovering themselves in the pain and beauty of the vast American plains. Seim’s lyrical prose is shot through with vibrant images, as here, where Jordan discovers her new ability in the school’s tornado tunnel: “Ashy and resembling burnt wood, a cloud of smoke billowed out of her mouth and nose. At first she couldn’t move, couldn’t stop the thing from filling the entirety of the tunnel with her cinders.” Fragmentary in its structure, the novel is held together by the tenderness with which Seim constructs her characters’ relationships. The magical realist elements heighten rather than overshadow this wonderfully stark vision of 21st-century Kansas.

An inventive and deeply felt coming-of-age novel following two siblings.