Where the Power Fails, the Light Begins: Climate Resilience in The Light Pirate

In "The Light Pirate," Lily Brooks-Dalton crafts a haunting but beautiful narrative of a Florida succumbing to climate collapse and the people that bear witness to it. The novel blends speculative realism and intimate personal storytelling to portray a world where rising seas, worsening storms, and societal abandonment slowly erode the boundaries between civilization and wilderness. Whilst reading this impactful story, I found echoes to past book club readings particularly the essays of "All We Can Save" and last years philosophical warnings from Amitav Ghosh in "The Great Derangement."

A Submerged World: Climate Change as Setting and Catalyst

At its core, "The Light Pirate" is a story about adaptation—not just to environmental changes, but to the emotional and psychological disruptions they cause. The novel’s protagonist, Wanda, named after the hurricane that ushers her into the world, grows up amid the long, slow unraveling of infrastructure and societal norms. The scene of her birth in the middle of the storm was one that particularly resonated with me, as someone who visualized contractions as waves to crest during my own birth experience, I found the scene connective and impactful.

Brooks-Dalton doesn't rely on apocalyptic spectacle; instead, she focuses on the everyday erosion of normalcy. The electric grid becomes unreliable. Roads disappear under water. People move away. Eventually, even language and memory begin to slip. This connection to the human elements of life in relation to the environment is what makes the most impact. The tension between living as human and the planet living its own way is critical. Almost as if there are two stories happening, one silent (the water's) with no narrator just actions and one human, in which internal narratives are shaped by the actions of the earth as well as other beings.

Fact Time: In the last decade, the speed at which Florida’s sea level is rising has increased and is now rising by as much as 1 inch every 3 years. Around Miami, it took around 31 years for the sea level to rise by 6 inches. Scientists now forecast that in just the next 15 years, the sea level will have risen by another 6 inches. (https://sealevelrise.org/states/florida/)

Why We Must Imagine the Unimaginable

In "The Great Derangement," Ghosh critiques the literary establishment’s failure to engage with climate change as a serious artistic subject. He laments the absence of collective imagination in mainstream fiction, arguing that our inability to envision large-scale environmental disruption is a form of cultural paralysis. "The Light Pirate" resists this inertia. Brooks-Dalton dares to imagine and more importantly normalize the end of a way of life, allowing her characters to evolve in tandem with a transformed Earth. The question then remains, does this type of fiction help us feel motivated to action to prevent it or does it give us the comfort of plan for the inevitable?

Survival and Care: Echoes of All We Can Save

Several of the "All We Can Save" essays argue the need for a change of leadership direction, one that is rooted in care, community, and resilience. In short matriarchy! Feminine values permeate Wanda’s journey. as her world contracts, she finds sustenance in relationships—with nature, with chosen family, and with a rediscovered sense of place. The struggles highlighted in the novel are ones of human connection and communication. The characters are constantly shown to be in conflict with their inner selves and those that the world want, or what they think the world wants to see.

The novel’s focus on feminine strength, interdependence, and long-term caretaking mirrors the message of "All We Can Save." Wanda does not fight nature—she learns to live with it. Her growing connection to the environment, as both threat and teacher, models the kind of attunement and humility that many say is required for the next phase of human history. Wanda's story is less about domination or even escape and more about rootedness and reciprocity.

Mothers of Necessity: Nurturing in a Collapsing World

Motherhood and maternal figures are central to The Light Pirate, offering both literal and symbolic frameworks for survival. Wanda's birth mother dies in childbirth—a loss that marks the beginning of her orphan-like journey through a disintegrating society. It is the childless Phyllis, who emerges as one of the novel’s most profound mother figures. A former academic and environmentalist, she represents a different kind of maternal presence—one rooted in wisdom, knowledge, and intergenerational continuity.

Later in the novel, as Wanda becomes more isolated and independent, she herself begins to embody a maternal role—toward the land, toward knowledge, and eventually toward the next generation. The maternal becomes ecological: caregiving shifts from individual children to the broader task of shepherding life through crisis.

The novel’s maternal figures echo the generative power found in both nature and community, reinforcing the idea that nurturing and protecting are radical acts of climate resistance.

Light as Transformation: A Phenomenon of Power and Presence

While "The Light Pirate" is grounded in the physical reality of climate collapse, Lily Brooks-Dalton also weaves in a subtle thread of the supernatural through the motif of light—specifically, the way it manifests around Wanda. From the moment of her birth during a hurricane-induced blackout to the increasingly strange, luminous experiences she has as she matures, light becomes more than a natural element—it is a marker of change, perception, and power.

Wanda’s relationship with light is mysterious and never fully explained. At key moments in the novel, she experiences sensations and visions that seem to transcend ordinary perception—glows, flickers, a kind of bioluminescent clarity. These moments often occur during periods of extreme solitude or emotional distress, suggesting that the light is a reflection of her inner evolution. In a world where electricity has vanished, Wanda becomes a kind of living conduit of energy—natural, emotional, and possibly spiritual.

While Brooks-Dalton humanizes the slow violence of ecological collapse, the addition of Wanda's curious internal light invites readers into a space of wonder, reminding us that in the ruins of the old world, new forms of consciousness may emerge and that we should consider not just how we will survive climate change—but how we might transform in its wake.

---

Next Meeting