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"Peter Rock is one of my favorite writers and I loved reading Makeshift, a gorgeously written, terrifying, and tender foray into the heart of what it means to be in relationship to one another, and to our world which is not over, which is still home." -Karen Russell
Makeshift is a one-of-a-kind tale set on a small rock-bound island somewhere in the coastal pacific northwest. The island's inhabitants are three sisters-Ari, Heiko, and CeeCee-whose parents led them to this island sanctuary from the "before world."
Left alone after a marauding band of foreigners has slaughtered all the adults and burnt their homes, the sisters learn to fend for themselves. They fish and forage in the shallow waters of their protected cove, salvage useful treasures from the rusting hulks of robotic ships that run aground on its offshore reefs, and entertain themselves with half remembered songs and tales from the time before.
Their world, the world of Makeshift, is at once idyllic and haunted, an untouched wild refuge on the fringes of a burnt-out war-torn world. A world that has left them, "Feeling somewhere between lost and finding our way."
Makeshift is an uncompromising act of good faith, a testament to devotion and allegiance rendered with the haunting grace of Rock's precision prose. "Peter Rock is one of my favorite writers and I loved reading Makeshift, a gorgeously written, terrifying, and tender foray into the heart of what it means to be in relationship to one another, and to our world which is not over, which is still home." -Karen Russell
"In Peter Rock's haunting and eerie eleventh novel, young Ari narrates a story of finding and making family after everything has gone wrong. Or have things gone wrong? Rock's glorious evocation of the natural world yearns for a time before, or in this case, after modern civilization-here, wreck-diving cormorants and trees responding to the north-western breezes serve as a Greek chorus for a world slaked of human intervention. Lyrical and poignant, Makeshift proves a powerful antidote to the modern world by tracing the landscape's roots to the Inuit peoples of the Pacific Northwest. This must-read novel lures the reader in, not unlike the coastal wrecks that line Makeshift Island." -Adam Johnson author of The Wayfinder: A Novel PETER ROCK is the author of eleven previous works of fiction, including My Abandonment, which won the Alex Award and was adapted into the film Leave No Trace by Debra Granik. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Finishing out his 23rd and final year as a professor of creative writing at Reed College, Rock lives in Portland with his wife and two daughters.
Makeshift is a one-of-a-kind tale set on a small rock-bound island somewhere in the coastal pacific northwest. The island's inhabitants are three sisters-Ari, Heiko, and CeeCee-whose parents led them to this island sanctuary from the "before world."
Left alone after a marauding band of foreigners has slaughtered all the adults and burnt their homes, the sisters learn to fend for themselves. They fish and forage in the shallow waters of their protected cove, salvage useful treasures from the rusting hulks of robotic ships that run aground on its offshore reefs, and entertain themselves with half remembered songs and tales from the time before.
Their world, the world of Makeshift, is at once idyllic and haunted, an untouched wild refuge on the fringes of a burnt-out war-torn world. A world that has left them, "Feeling somewhere between lost and finding our way."
Makeshift is an uncompromising act of good faith, a testament to devotion and allegiance rendered with the haunting grace of Rock's precision prose. "Peter Rock is one of my favorite writers and I loved reading Makeshift, a gorgeously written, terrifying, and tender foray into the heart of what it means to be in relationship to one another, and to our world which is not over, which is still home." -Karen Russell
"In Peter Rock's haunting and eerie eleventh novel, young Ari narrates a story of finding and making family after everything has gone wrong. Or have things gone wrong? Rock's glorious evocation of the natural world yearns for a time before, or in this case, after modern civilization-here, wreck-diving cormorants and trees responding to the north-western breezes serve as a Greek chorus for a world slaked of human intervention. Lyrical and poignant, Makeshift proves a powerful antidote to the modern world by tracing the landscape's roots to the Inuit peoples of the Pacific Northwest. This must-read novel lures the reader in, not unlike the coastal wrecks that line Makeshift Island." -Adam Johnson author of The Wayfinder: A Novel PETER ROCK is the author of eleven previous works of fiction, including My Abandonment, which won the Alex Award and was adapted into the film Leave No Trace by Debra Granik. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Finishing out his 23rd and final year as a professor of creative writing at Reed College, Rock lives in Portland with his wife and two daughters.