Rode, Michelle. Water Seekers. Round Rock, Tex: Prizm Books, 2008. Paperback. 212 p. ISBN: 9781603703581. $13.95

Michelle Rode’s Water Seekers is set 30 years after a nuclear apocalypse. Each chapter is narrated in two parts: the present day by an unnamed narrator and in a topically related account, an omniscient narrator—an “old one” named Zara—recalls life before the disaster and reveals experiences from childhood onward.

The unnamed narrator, a young loner traveling from camp to camp in the Southwest desert looking for work in exchange for food and water, has been listening to rumors of a place in the North called the Great Lakes, where water is supposedly easy to come by. He plans to check these rumors out and is convinced by Zara that traveling in a group would be safest. Ultimately, a group with varying survival skills set forth. They encounter storms, hostile camps, quicksand, and illness as they search for something no one is sure even exists.

Though the main characters in this novel are not gay or lesbian, there is minor positive/neutral lesbian content in the story. Recommended.

Reviewed by Nancy Silverrod
San Francisco Public Library