While staying in rural Saskatchewan at the oldest monastery in Canada I read Karen Russell’s latest book The Antidote. So, perhaps it was not a wonder that the first thing that grabbed me about it were its descriptions of the Nebraska prairies. On my drive down from Alberta, I’d noticed the way the trees thinned out and all but disappeared, as if a displeased God had yanked them from the earth. It left me more exposed to the sun than I’d been in months, my chest the chemical pink of cherry soda by the trip’s end.
Set during the 1930’s, The Antidote describes a period of Nebraska’s history when its inhabitants were bucking up against the thought of shelterbelt trees—not wanting to give up any area where they might plant crops—while precious topsoil continued to rip off into the wind and turn the afternoon sky the colour of midnight.
As if to mirror this nakedness of the land, the book reveals every part of its characters. The most prominent of these is the Antidote herself, a prairie witch or “Vault.” Buried inside her are the traumas and secrets of her clients. She takes these deposits for a fee, and can return them to you only at your request and for a secondary charge. As I read, I found myself calculating what I’d spent on therapy and wishing people like the Antidote actually existed.
As the book continues, we meet a crooked sheriff who has a habit of taking witnesses to the Antidote for late night deposits, a black photographer sent to document the struggle of the white settler, a girl with a murdered mother, and the uncle of that girl—a man who is the son of Polish parents that came to Nebraska after being promised the land they were to inhabit belonged to no one.
But we the reader already know this promise was false. There were Indigenous tribes on that land who were pushed out with the help of various government decrees, people who knew and cared for that land better than the settlers ever could. And this is the true surprise of the book. There are Vaults who’ll take your secrets as deposits and quantum cameras that show the same landscape in a different time, but threaded through this work of magical realism is a lesson in stewardship.
I’d expected a good, strange book with Russell’s carefully chosen words that sometimes fly up at you off the page like birds. I’d not expected to be so thoroughly schooled by a history that is fictionalized, yes, but also so set in fact that it made me wonder about possible futures and the likelihood that they might exist. That we can still learn from our past and make the changes that might save us.
— Danica Klewchuk is a writer from Edmonton, Alberta. Her work has appeared in Swamp Pink, Event, Room Magazine, and On Spec. Her first book, Standing in the Footprints of Beasts, a memoir in essays, will be published by NeWest Press in the fall of 2025.
You can read Danica Klewchuk's story "Important Intersection Ahead" in Issue 304 (Summer Creative Nonfiction 2025). Order the issue now:
Order Issue 304 - Summer Creative Nonfiction 2025 (Canadian Addresses)
Order Issue 304 - Summer Creative Nonfiction 2025 (International Addresses)
