The Unveiling

Making an uneven excursion into horror, Barry (When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East) offers a mind-bending exploration of grief and trauma. Film scout Striker is the only Black person on a luxury Antarctic cruise otherwise populated by über-wealthy white people. She joins a kayak excursion that ends in disaster when the guide is killed in an event that none of the group can remember. As Striker and the other now stranded survivors take shelter on an island to wait for help, the group’s mental states devolve amid the lonely and harsh landscape. The island hides strange secrets about its historical inhabitants, and Striker and the others are pushed to the brink of madness as the island uncovers their secrets as well. Hope of being rescued steadily dwindles until the group begins to doubt there’s even a world to get back to. The novel gets off to a stellar start rife with tension and satire drawn from Barry’s smart and often witty characterization, but the final act largely ignores this solid groundwork in favor of increasingly dreamlike descriptions of surreal arctic landscapes. It feels like squandered potential. Agent: Michelle Brower, Trellis Literary Management. (Oct.)