Climates are falling apart due to green house gases and global warming. The nuclear family is falling apart due to Well, that depends upon who you ask. Whatever the cause, certainly the traditional pattern of the nuclear family is undergoing an apocalypse. Helen Urie, the twenty year old narrator, is adrift on a bleak emotional sea. Her immediate family are pursuing their dreams.
Mom wants to be an astronaut.
Dad is a disaster relief worker. Brother Paul will someday design buildings for the cities of the twenty-first century. But for Helen life is not living up to expectations, what she was somehow promised in the fairytale tropes that infuse North American culture. Her alienation crystallizes after she and Paul forsake their reserved seats at their mother s space shuttle launch, only to see a smiling replacement family waving in their stead on the evening s news. Back in Toronto Helen drops out of school and reinvents herself.