The Same and Different Rivers

These four interconnected short stories are an exploration of the intricacies of normal human existence in times of apocalypse and upheaval. Though it can be easy to forget as they go about their lives, navigating family, art, and the unhidden past, the characters in The Same and Different Rivers exist in a world about to end. Living between the hills, prairies and rivers of Eastern Washington, they grapple with unpredictable weather and unbreathable air. A climate crisis makes every choice simultaneously futile and essential. Through the rampage of modern life runs a river, swelling and drying up like a living lung. After meeting a stranger whose life entwines with hers at a shocking speed, a woman finds her history unearthed by water. Decades earlier, her grandmother contemplates how much control she has over her existence. In the near future, a person’s connection to the river causes them to undergo physical transformations. And even further ahead in the apocalypse, another woman struggles to understand prophetic messages left by a dead artist. Connected by water that refuses to conform to expectations, these stories are at once eerily familiar and utterly strange. Wrestling their way through catastrophes both personal and existential, fostering hatred and love for good reasons and hollow ones, characters embody the questions that define life right now, as well as those that construct our uncertain future.