When I first read this book in 2016, I wasn't that impressed with the quality of the writing -- but the storyline kept coming back to me -- the premise of battling Western States for water. I eventually reread the book this last year, what with all the even more current discussions about water rights in the West. Like Cadillac Desert, this book seems ahead of its time and the premises disturbingly prophetic.
Climate change thriller about Phoenix at war with Vegas vs. Colorado/Utah/California for control of water in the West.
3 main characters and their POVs:
Angel - the water knife for Catherine Case, powerful Las Vegas businesswoman and creator of “Arcologies” -- self-contained little water worlds in the desert, using recycling, solar etc to exist separate from everyone else, and he’s in charge of enforcing and getting more water rights for Case so she can grow more powerful.
Lucy - Pulitzer-winning journalist based in Phoenix who is covering the whole demise of Phoenix, the refugee crisis, and water issues
Maria - one of the Texans, fleeing Texas on a quest to “go north” to get to the water. She’s a teenager. Toomie, a black dude, who befriends and father figure to Maria.
Story starts with Angel getting the go ahead to cut water from Carver City (imaginary Phoenix town on Colorado River).
Lucy’s friend Jamie disappears (found murdered) after bragging he had a secret that was going to make him rich and get him out Phoenix (ancient water rights)
Maria - as Texan, struggling to make $, dealing with the gangs and thugs controlling $/power/water in Phoenix. Her friend Sarah is a hooker, who looks to score with water rich dude in one of the archologies.
Starts with Angel’s POV. Book ends with Maria’s POV
Opening:
“There were stories of sweat.
The sweat of a woman bent double in an onion field, working fourteen hours under the hot sun, was different from the sweat of a man as he approached a checkpoint in Mexico, praying to La Santa Muerte that the federales weren’t on the payroll of the enemies he was fleeing. The sweat of a ten-year-old boy staring into the barrel of a SIG Sauer was different from the sweat of a woman struggling across the desert and praying to the Virgin that a water cache was going to turn out to be exactly where her coyote's map told her it would be.
Sweat was a body’s history, compressed into jewels, beaded on the brow, staining shirts with salt. It told you everything about how a person had ended up in the right place at the wrong time, and whether they would survive another day.” (1)
Toomie: “‘Sometimes you realize that not risking something so you can live is worse than dying.’
‘I want to live,’ Maria said.
‘We all want to live,’ Toomie said.
‘We got to get out of here.’” (315) -- Maria is the one who ultimately shoots Lucy when Lucy tries to ride off with the water right papers, so Maria can get to Vegas and out of there.
Angel: “‘Never could figure out why people would think they could survive all out on their lonesome like that [The preppers - preparing for “the End”] All of them sitting in their little bunkers, thinking they’re going to ride out the apocalypse alone.’
‘Maybe they watch too many old Westerns.’
‘Nobody survives on their own.’ Angel’s vehemence made Lucy suspect he wasn’t really taking about preppers.” (329)
Angel “Live by the gun, die by the gun, right, mijo? You make a living cutting people’s water, at some point, the scales got to balance you out.
Symmetry. Clear symmetry.
Some people had to bleed so other people could drink. Simple as that. It was just his turn.” (366)