Nightshining - Paperback

by Jennifer Kabat (Author)

"Jennifer Kabat's Nightshining sifts a riveting exposé of the Cold War technocratic fantasy-state through lyrical family memoir. Her superb investigation calls to mind those of Rebecca Solnit and Errol Morris, among others."--Jonathan Lethem

A propulsive, layered examination of the conflict between the course of nature and human legacies of resistance and control.

Floods, geoengineering, climate crisis. Her first year in Margaretville, New York, Jennifer Kabat wakes to a rain-swollen stream and her basement flooding. As she delves into the region's fraught environmental history, it becomes clear that this is far from the first--and hardly the worst--disaster in the region. Tracing connections across time, she uncovers Cold War weather experiments, betrayals of the Mohawk Nation, and an unlikely cast of characters, including Kurt Vonnegut's older brother, Bernard--all reflected through grief brought on by her father's recent passing.

Inquisitive and experimental, Nightshining uses place as a palimpsest of history. With lyrical incision, Kabat mirrors her own life experience and the essence of being human--the cosmos thrumming in our bodies, connecting readers to the land around us and time before us.

Author Biography

Jennifer Kabat was a finalist for the Notting Hill Editions' essay prize and has been published in BOMB and The Best American Essays. The author of The Eighth Moon, her writing has also appeared in Frieze, Harper's, McSweeney's, and The Believer. She's received an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for her criticism and teaches at the School of Visual Arts and the New School. An apprentice herbalist, she lives in rural Upstate New York and serves on her volunteer fire department.