Karen Russell’s storytelling can be fantastically otherworldly and dauntingly rooted in reality. The Antidote, Russell’s first novel since 2011’s Swamplandia!, does what good epics should – complicate the distance between the past and the present. As a native Nebraskan, I had my skepticisms about Russell’s witch-infused, midwestern tale (Russell herself grew up in Florida), but the power of her at once hopeful and cautionary message resonates. A mere month after the epic’s release, join Russell and the First Light team to ponder memory, climate, and the American novel. – Caroline Drew