In this Ravishing World is a sweeping, impassioned short story collection, ringing out with joy, despair, and hope for the natural world. Nine connected stories unfold, bringing together an unforgettable cast of dreamers, escapists, activists, and artists, creating a kaleidoscopic view of the climate crisis.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Nina Schuyler’s In This Ravishing World, which is out now.
An older woman who has spent her entire life fighting for the planet sinks into despair. A young boy is determined to bring the natural world to his bleak urban reality. A scientist working to solve the plastic problem grapples with whether to have a child. A ballet dancer endeavors to inhabit the consciousness of a rat.
In this Ravishing World is a full-throated chorus— with Nature joining in— marveling at the exquisite beauty of our world, and pleading, raging, and ultimately urging all of its inhabitants toward activism and resistance.
Paradise
Hugh knows what he needs, what his family needs, and what is coming. New Zealand is the answer. Isolated, self-sufficient, clean water, clean air. Hugh pictures his family swimming in the blue ocean and birds in a blue sky. His son loves birds. Lush green hills, white sand. It has to be New Zealand. He keeps returning to water: clean drinking water will be an issue. So will heat. Drought. Fires. Smoke. Lack of food, Jesus, food will be a big issue. They could build a greenhouse and grow their food.
Hugh gazes out his big bay window at a bright San Francisco and a sky with tattered white clouds. Thoughts of what’s coming are like a pack of ravenous wild wolves nipping at his heels. He can feel their hot breath on his neck, hear their panting and growls, their paws pounding the pavement, the stringy saliva splattering, one solid leap to bite his neck, that’s how close they are.
Sailboats race across the water, and someone speeds on a windsurfer. And part of what’s coming is a stark divide, even more pronounced than it is now, between the Haves and the Have-nots. Have-nots—put that in the liability column for remaining in the United States because today’s rumble of civil unrest will seem tame, like a little roughhousing between boys. If you’re hanging on by your fingernails, morality is out and violence in. A gun to the back, to the head; a knife to the throat, at night, day—daylight won’t protect against abject desperation.
It’s got to be New Zealand, with its wealth heaped on the senses. Dick bought twenty acres and paid only four million, but he got in early. Roy bought land in Canada, but now he thinks it’s New Zealand, and Ben, good ol’ Ben, one of the biggest stoners at Columbia, now worth hundreds of millions, made the move to New Zealand permanent. His last Christmas card was a picture of him and his family of six, all smiles and tan with sun-kissed hair.
The wind is blowing, and the windows have taken on a chill. Below, cars crawl along stretches of shadow, and the bay looks like a sheet of hard metal. He respects metal, how durable it is, how versatile and resilient, and so many things made out of metal, though his entire adult life has had nothing to do with metal or the material world. Founder of MD CONNECT, he has more than five million of the ten to fifteen million doctors worldwide on his site, and the advertising revenue is mind-boggling. At Stanford Graduate School of Business he had to write a business plan, and his vision was MD CONNECT, though his professors warned, “Not likely. Get ready for a string of failures before you hit one out of the ballpark.” But this one hit, soaring into the big sky, and it’s still hanging up there like the blinding sun.
On his computer he pulls up one of the houses the real estate agent showed him half an hour ago. Five bedrooms, four baths on the north shore, a pool, tennis court, and basketball court, very modern, clean lines, minimalist look. A steal at five million; in California, it would be at least fifteen mil. The nearest neighbors—they don’t exist. Inside, lots of natural light, white walls, and wood floors.
There’s the one even farther up the north shore, but it’s got too much gold, though they could tear that out. A huge pool, a fitness and movie room in the basement, and a putting green by the driveway. He could teach his son how to play golf. Gabe likes anything repetitive. In his bedroom he has on his shelf at least 200 miniature Pokémon figures that he made out of clay, each with incredible detail, including Venusaur with six sharp white teeth and claws. Gabe could sell them if he could bear to part with them. The doctor said to keep him off screens because they’re a stimulant, like caffeine or amphetamines or cocaine—he needs physical activity and nature to calm him.
He clicks to the next house, newly built, everything state-of-the-art, energy efficient, fifty solar panels soaking up the sun, and four Tesla batteries that power the entire place. As he roams through the house with his mouse, he heads to the jacuzzi in the master bedroom. Franny will love it. When you head to the beach, you go down—he zeroes in on the screen— this little path here. White sand, water, and seagulls snapping up orange crabs.
Hugh uses Google Maps and flies up high and then zooms down to the house, three sides of a rectangle, the pool off to the right, the basketball court closer to the garage, and not a soul on the beach. Sun, sand, wind, and water are not sullied by humans. Humans need the rhythm of nature. The irony isn’t lost on him, he who spends hours in front of his computer screen.
Hugh asked the agent for any other recommendations—any other country, state—and the agent brought up the luxury nuclear bunkers in Kansas—that former Atlas Missile silo—but Hugh said no to that, they aren’t heading underground.
It’s New Zealand because he needs to put a hell of a lot of distance between himself and the wolves with their snapping jaws and meaty breath, which he occasionally smells. Maybe he’ll fly over and look at this house. Or they can all go—call it a vacation. Hugh looks at the house on the screen. The obstacle is Fran. If he can get Fran to listen to him, see his vision. He can picture Fran on the sunny porch, her long beautiful legs, her elegance, her hazel eyes. Her face open with happiness. His children swimming in the ocean. Only the waves and sea birds. He’ll swim with his children, and the fatigue beneath his eyes will vanish. At night they’ll sleep so deeply after rearranging themselves in the waves.
He looks up from his computer, busy formulating arguments in his head because he’s picturing Fran’s expression—her eyes, stern, hard, steady. She’s not a screamer. She steels herself, revs up her intelligence, her logic, cold and calculating. In a former life, she must have been a prosecutor.
***
He’s on the phone for several hours with legal and product, handling privacy issues. With doctors exchanging patient information, it must be 100 percent secure, but the product team is always enthusiastic about some new idea to use the info. The money is tantalizing, but he’s not stupid; he knows the core product can’t be compromised.
In between calls, he clicks on the New Zealand house. He didn’t see it the first time, but off to the right, down by the ocean, there is a greenhouse. Fran will love that. This is the house. He can’t stop looking at the sun pouring on the house and the beach. The ocean is bluish and brackish, and the sand is gleaming white.
He’s bursting with the news; it’s the answer he’s been searching for. He feels imprisoned by it; his obsessiveness makes New Zealand whistle in his ear. He calls home, and the phone rings and rings. A couple of minutes later, Fran calls back. “I saw you called. How’s your day?”
He wants to blurt it out. He’s not good at secrets. When his parents told the family at dinner they were going to have a new baby sister and let’s keep this news in the family, he excused himself to go to the bathroom and instead ran next door to tell the neighbors. Excitement and enthusiasm burned down the walls of the secret. But he can’t; it needs to be the right time. He needs to see her face to determine her mood.
“Good, just checking in,” he says.
“Everything’s good here. I spent the morning writing my way into a deep, dark corner of despair, but it’s the truth, so it’s good.”
“I’m glad.”
In a world of her own making, she can enter the most awful things.
“Miss you,” she says. “Are you sure everything is okay?”
Her intelligence is wide and probing, not only brain power but emotional intelligence. The way she picks up on the most minute discordant vibration, even over the phone.
“Yep. Just called to hear your voice.”
A pause. “Okay. Will you be late tonight?”
“Nope.” A sailboat is heading toward Angel Island. The seagulls are black curved lines. “Gabe good today?”
“He’s so cute. He picked out his clothes this morning. His blue pants and red shirt with the big green dinosaur on it.”
A custom-made shirt. Most fourteen-year-olds have outgrown their obsession with dinosaurs. “He loves that shirt.”
“I can barely get it off him to wash it.”
“We’ll have to buy a second one, maybe a third.”
She laughs. Twenty years married, and he loves this woman. How patient she is with Gabe, how loving, how kind. Half the time he wants to throttle his son. A boy with so many challenges, Hugh can barely think about them all without being clobbered by sadness. Whatever gods there are, they turned their back on his son. His struggle to read, to write, to understand math, to relate to people, but man, he’s a fabulous artist. When he thinks of Gabe, his protective hackles go up like hair on an animal’s back.
“And Louise,” says Fran, “is Louise.”
“Fran,” he says.
“Are you sure something didn’t happen? Your voice is full of energy like something happened. Or you’re really excited.”
He feels a particular loneliness. The secret of New Zealand is a wall between them. “Love you. See you soon.”
“Love you too. See you tonight.”
