We Are Unprepared

In this remarkable debut novel, Meg Little Reilly tells the story of a young couple who leave the city for rural Vermont in search of an authentic life, but soon find themselves unmoored as a powerful superstorm bears down on their region. A story of love lost then found again when the winds blow out and the waters recede, We Are Unprepared is also a prescient tale, filled with a sense that this could really happen.

Ash and his wife, Pia, both hipsters in their midthirties, uproot themselves from a brownstone in Brooklyn to the town of Isole in northeast Vermont in search of a more self–reliant lifestyle. But after a few idyllic months, the days begin to grow unnaturally hot, ill–omened and filled with discontent. The Weather Service, too, is awash with portentous news about a catastrophic hurricane season brewing off–shore. Preparations preoccupy the town and deepen the cracks inside the community – and within the couple's marriage. Ash finds support with the civic–minded townspeople as they ready themselves for the worst, while Pia falls in with radical “preppers” who want to move off the grid. When The Storm finally hits, it razes both external and internal landscapes, leaving everything – and everyone – permanently altered.

Simply and effectively, We Are Unprepared examines how the bonds of love, marriage and community fray and reform, strained by the fear of impending disaster.