The appearance of an outsider disrupts the lives of two women, a mother and daughter, living in an isolated, apocalyptic environment. Edith and Skalde live in "the territory," a landscape blighted by oppressive heat. Most large animals have died off, though dogs are still pets and rabbits remain as one of the only sources of meat. Skalde, the book's sole narrator, tends to their potato patch and does her best to grow up in the face of Edith's indifference (Edith spends days on end lying on the couch or in the bathtub) and cruelty, both emotional and physical. Now Skalde has only her writings to keep her company. It hasn't always been this way: From her childhood, Skalde remembers fog, damp weather, and Edith's attention. Although they are not alone in the territory, the few other inhabitants tend to steer clear of them for reasons that Skalde doesn't fully understand. She is resigned to their isolation, though; the one bridge to the mainland was deliberately blown up years before to keep the territory residents safe from interlopers. That's why it shocks Skalde to come across a young girl with red hair--a clear sign that she doesn't belong to the territory. When Skalde decides to take the girl, Meisis, back to the home she shares with Edith, she has no idea how much this will threaten the territory's residents and how quickly whatever order was found there will unravel. Bukowski has written a lean, muscular book that dispenses with much worldbuilding or exposition, but the book's taut shape seems to fit with Skalde's fiercely guarded self-sufficiency. With dashes of folk horror, cli-fi, and post-apocalyptic influences, Bukowski crafts a narrative that is somehow both propulsive and elegantly spare. A memorable entry into the dystopian-literature canon from a young German writer to watch. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In Bukowski's gripping debut, a woman attempts to raise a child in a near future dramatically altered by climate change. People's bodies have changed, too. Austere Edith, fully grown, still has "milk teeth," or baby teeth. She lives with her daughter Skalde in a withered landscape in what seems to be total solitude-- until it's revealed that neighbors do exist, and are hostile. The neighbors' distrust of Edith and Skalde increases when Skalde, now in her teens, takes in a child named Meisis she finds in the forest, who appears to be at the age when she would expect to lose her milk teeth. The girl's arrival and her red hair, which is alien to the small and highly isolated community, prompts a series of disputes among the superstitious members, who blame Meisis's arrival for the disappearance of two girls from the community. As Skalde's attachment to Meisis grows, she makes a life-changing decision. The narrative is reliably tense if sometimes overheated with red herrings that add suspense without driving the plot, and Bukowski's surreal descriptions of the landscape are exceptional ("The fog has swallowed up the sea. It stands like a wall, there, where the beach begins"). There's no shortage of climate fiction these days, but this one is distinguished by its striking vision. (Sept.)