Thrust

Cruces 1

We dreamed we were hers.

The body of us thought that, because we built her, we belonged to her. We built her in pieces from our bodies, from the stories we held and the stories before that and the stories that might come. She arrived by boat in pieces.

When the ship Isre finally reached port, we wept. The sailors too. They had been convinced that the tempests they'd endured on board would drown them in the ocean, and the cargo with them. The deck of the ship was nearly a farmer's field in size. The hold had been covered with huge black tarps for the journey. When the sailors pulled the tarps back, the hold looked dark and foreboding.

I was asked to jump into that dark.

Like plunging into the ocean's deep.

Down in the hold, my eyes began to adjust. Gigantic crates the size of houses filled with pieces of the colossus: a woman in slices, crated and shipped. One by one, we found her body parts.

Hair.

Nose.

Crown.

Eyes.

Mouth.

Fingers, hand.

Foot.

Torch.

She had arrived, in pieces of herself.

Later, while discussing her reassemblage, an engineer remarked that the "embryo lighthouse," as they called the interior skeleton of the statue, held clues to reconstructing her form. Yet many elements of her construction went unexplained, left us puzzled. We were left with our imaginations to create adaptations.

During those months, we lived in the city and we labored on the island. We were woodworkers, ironworkers, roofers and plasterers and brick masons. We were pipe fitters and welders and carpenters. We mixed concrete, we pounded earth, we armed the saws and drills. We were sheet metal and copper specialists. She arrived in our hands as thirty-one tons of copper and one hundred and twenty-five tons of steel. Three hundred copper sheets had been pressed to create the outer skin of her.

We were cooks and cleaners and nuns and night watchpeople. We were nurses and artists and janitors, runners and messengers and

Lidia Yuknavitch is the nationally bestselling author of the novels The Book of Joan, The Small Backs of Children, and Dora: A Headcase, the story collection Verge, and the memoir The Chronology of Water. She is the recipient of two Oregon Book Awards and has been a finalist for the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize and the PEN Center USA Creative Nonfiction Award. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
 

Advance praise for Thrust:

An epic fable [that] operates more like a poem. The New York Times

[The] most mind-blowing book about America I ve ever inhaled. . . . I read Thrust in a state of flustered fascination and finished longing to dream it again. Ron Charles, Washington Post

There s so much that feels deeply present about Yuknavitch s latest novel: the ever-expanding police state, lower Manhattan under water, and a woman on a mission to rescue other vulnerable women. Yuknavitch s words are incantations, and Thrust is a triumph.   Elle

Thrust is the culmination of everything she has been writing toward, a blistering excoriation of power structures that also honors the resilience of those who fight back. . . . It s a book that uses history and America as a jumping-off point to dissolve borders and boundaries.   Michele Filgate, Los Angeles Times

Moving and incisive.   Time

[This] powerful, braided fable unites workers of the world across time and space and class to start conceiving of a better world. . . . Yuknavitch is firmly in control. Los Angeles Times

Complex, enthralling . . . page-turning . . An epic story of dystopia and hope, and ultimately about the power of storytelling. Sarah Neilson, Shondaland

A dizzily interlacing view of American history.   New York

[A] forceful, fluid, erotic new novel. Boston Globe

A dazzling new novel that marks another imaginative feat in a career with no shortage of them. A lyrical and dexterous critique of a future America ravaged by climate change and surveillance, Thrust is both of the moment and utterly timeless. Chicago Review of Books

This weirdly wonderful [novel] on the surveillance state, climate change, and what it means to have agency as a woman in the world will throw your mind for a loop in the best way. Good Housekeeping

A stunningly beautiful novel