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Weather Woman
30-year-old Bronwyn Artair, feeling out of place in her doctoral program in Atmospheric Sciences at MIT, drops out and takes a job as a TV meteorologist, much to the dismay of her mentor, Diane Fenwick. After a year of living alone in Southern New Hampshire, enduring the indignities of her job, dumped by her boyfriend, she discovers her deep connection to the natural world has given her an ability to affect natural forces. When she finally accepts she really possesses this startling capability, she must then negotiate a new relationship to the world. Who will she tell? Who will believe her? Most importantly, how will she put this new skill of hers to use? As she seeks answers to these questions, she travels to Kansas to see the tornado maverick she worships; falls in love with Matt, the tabloid journalist who has come to investigate her; visits fires raging out of control in Los Angeles; and eventually voyages with Matt and Diane to the methane fields of Siberia. A woman experiencing power for the first time in her life, she must figure out what she can do for the world without hurting it further. The story poses questions about science and intuition, women and power, and what the earth needs from humans.
356 pages, Paperback
Published October 7, 2018
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276 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
February 19, 2023
Thanks to Book Club Cookbook.
I really wanted to read this book since I'm sort of a weather geek and the title called to me.
Bronwyn (30 years old) becomes a meteorologist and has some kind of feeling throughout her body for some reason at foretelling the weather (that's the impression I got). Not sure if it was a phenomenon or what. I didn't get far enough to see what it really was and what she did with it.
The author made a great effort in telling a different kind of story but I just couldn't finish it. It got to be that I didn't understand much of this book at all.
I really wanted to read this book since I'm sort of a weather geek and the title called to me.
Bronwyn (30 years old) becomes a meteorologist and has some kind of feeling throughout her body for some reason at foretelling the weather (that's the impression I got). Not sure if it was a phenomenon or what. I didn't get far enough to see what it really was and what she did with it.
The author made a great effort in telling a different kind of story but I just couldn't finish it. It got to be that I didn't understand much of this book at all.
October 20, 2021
Realistic and fantastical individual and ecological interconnectedness (New England, Midwest, Southern, and Western US, a South Pacific island, Australia, Brazil, and the Arctic; contemporary timeframe): Cai Emmons is an extraordinary wordsmith who’s created a two-book series on the magical powers of personal relationships and their interconnected relationships with Nature, and how individuals and groups have the power to change the trajectory of the climate change crisis. Each stands alone; together their strength is multiplied so this review encompasses both.
Weather Woman, the original novel, introduces some of the same well-drawn characters you’ll find in Sinking Islands. Its focus is primarily America; the sequel expands globally.
Book 1 sets forth the fantastical plot: that someone fascinated by weather and cloud formations since childhood is so acutely sensitive to atmospheric conditions they have a supernatural ability to alter the weather. Bronwyn Artair, thirty, getting her doctorate at MIT in atmospheric sciences, is that person. Unlike anyone you’ve known or heard of, her “long, wavy, dark-red hair” makes her physically stand out, but her superhuman power makes her unique.
Bronwyn’s rare gift takes the message of what each of us could do to make any difference in reducing global warming is far-fetched, extreme, but extreme eerie weather is what’s happening around the world. Scientists have told us time is running out; not everyone is listening or feels the urgency to act aggressively like Bronwyn intensely does. Everything about these novels is intense, including Emmons’ gifted prose.
Bronwyn “does not read people as she reads the earth.” She “burns hotter” with her “gutsy, mercurial nature.” Her mother died five years ago, leaving her awfully alone. Except when she’s in Nature, the “perfect solution for soothing a human being,” when she’s not “lost in a cyclone of loneliness.” The author’s literary, poetic prose is gorgeous: sometimes expressed meteorologically.
Emmons writes about the human condition of loneliness and how the devastation of climate change has caused profound loneliness. In Sinking Islands, we’re taken to more places around the globe where climate destruction has either transformed or threatens to erase their beauty. The mood in both novels isn’t just gloom and doom, though; it’s also wonderment and awe of Nature’s therapeutic powers and why we must find therapies to save and heal our aching planet.
If you think the premise is too wacky, too science-fiction-y, consider a proven scientific concept cited called the Butterfly Effect. The phenomenon captures Bronwyn’s moral dilemma when she finally accepts she can change weather (Book 1). The video below explains the theory as: “Small things in a complex system may have no effect or a massive one, and it is virtually impossible to know which will turn out to be the case”:
https://youtu.be/r2zOZ2WW8HE
In both novels, but more seriously in Sinking Islands, Bronwyn thinks not only of the potential benefits of her power but of unintended, harmful consequences. Described as a “thinker,” we get to see how she thinks and how her thinking evolves starting with the first time she’s done something unbelievable with a storm atop Mt. Washington in New Hampshire, famous for its extreme weather.
Initially, she thinks whatever she’d done is an aberration; we think it’s a weird coincidence. When she influences weather again, she thinks something’s wrong in her brain. When it happens again, she’s tormented by thinking she’s “coming unhinged,” having a nervous breakdown, or experiencing early onset dementia. When a witness sees how she stopped rain at a wedding, it spreads virally. Add a couple more witnesses to other weather conditions and she’s disgusted that she’s lost her privacy. Until she starts wondering could she do it again? Then tests herself in Kansas and Oklahoma’s Tornado Alley, later California’s wildfire country. Weather Woman tracks her evolution.
Sinking Islands raises the stakes from what one individual can do to experimenting with teaching others since she alone cannot possibly change the weather around the world. In Book 1 she’s “in love with the world like never before”; in Book 2 she spreads that love to a select group ripe for her interventions as they’re from beautiful places that global warming has despoiled. Their coming together isn’t just a statement about making a difference ecologically, but how doing so affects our relationships and humanity.
Weather Woman opens with Bronwyn’s doctoral studies under the mentorship of Professor Diane Fenwick, whom she’s known since she was eighteen; Diane convinced her to pursue academic science. They became very close friends; Diane loves her like the daughter and child she never had. (Happily married to Joe, a novelist who spends time in their cozy cottage in Maine to write). Mentor and mentee have two different personalities: Diane, the “extrovert” confident and commanding; “painfully shy” Bronwyn unsure of herself.
Hard sciences at an elite institution is a tough place for a woman. Bronwyn is constantly mocked by male students to such a degree that she questions and then decides she’s not cut out for academia and leaves the program to Diane’s great dismay, which continues into the sequel. Moving to southern New Hampshire to work as a meteorologist on TV, Bronwyn rents a secluded cabin in the woods overlooking a peaceful river. One day a reporter from Florida, Matt, shows up at the station and is immediately attracted to her. Their story is intense. How could it not be given Bronwyn’s intensity? Unlike Diane, a doubter of anything unless backed up by scientific data, he’s heard about Bronwyn’s otherworldly power, doesn’t believe it either but willing to turn his life upside down to be with her. Joe, whose career relies on imagination, is open-minded too, along with a few other believers appearing in one or both novels.
It’s Diane’s belief in Bronwyn that matters most. But her reaction is that this isn’t “thinking outside the-box – this is thinking outside the range of known human capability.” The reader will see whether Diane comes around or not in Sinking Islands.
Emmons, who taught creative writing and screenwriting at the University of Oregon, describes herself as a “word-lover” and “people lover” – both on full display. Sinking Islands has an even more ambitious reach than Weather Woman, but both are remarkable and thought-provoking.
The sinking island earns the title of Book 2 because it’s more momentous than a “discrete thing” as “all oceans are connected.” Located in the South Pacific, it could be any of the “islands of plastic” in which “apocalyptic” floods have washed plastics onto the shore, overwhelming sewage systems spreading “industrial chemicals, and human waste, and algae bloom, and deadly bacteria.” Two characters stand out in the island storyline: eleven-year-old Penina who has “limitless energy” like Bronwyn, and her lonely father Analu. He and Nahani, his wife, have already grieved the loss of their other two children who drowned from the high waters, so they decided to leave the island despite a dying grandmother’s wish not to. For Analu, the island has become a “winking hologram of beauty and sadness.”
A different type of “water crisis” is happening in São Paulo, Brazil. Severe drought is “squeezing the verve from everyone.” Felipe, a dancer in the theatre with the body of “Adonis,” is the central character. At forty, he’s single as dance has been his life. “Hydric collapse” means audiences are so on the edge they’re not coming to performances. This once lively city is rioting over water, diseases are spreading from standing water collected in buckets, and reservoirs are alarmingly low for a city that once owned “twelve percent of the world’s fresh water.” “Where does the soul of a city reside?”
Emmons whisks us to the Arctic Circle to draw our attention to magnitudes: survival under the most extreme weather conditions in Greenland, where the melting glaciers remind us of the butterfly effect warming Earth, affecting all of us. Except these hardy, resourceful Greenlanders still feel the “delicious joy of being alive.” Why don’t we, given all we have, the novel asks.
Although these two novels can’t provide answers, the message is we can still do something, individually and as a group. We’ll never have Bronwyn’s mythical ability to “coral” enormous concentration to release enormous energy through the body into the atmosphere, but we can make an effort that can have ripple effects.
Lorraine (EnchantedProse.com)
Weather Woman, the original novel, introduces some of the same well-drawn characters you’ll find in Sinking Islands. Its focus is primarily America; the sequel expands globally.
Book 1 sets forth the fantastical plot: that someone fascinated by weather and cloud formations since childhood is so acutely sensitive to atmospheric conditions they have a supernatural ability to alter the weather. Bronwyn Artair, thirty, getting her doctorate at MIT in atmospheric sciences, is that person. Unlike anyone you’ve known or heard of, her “long, wavy, dark-red hair” makes her physically stand out, but her superhuman power makes her unique.
Bronwyn’s rare gift takes the message of what each of us could do to make any difference in reducing global warming is far-fetched, extreme, but extreme eerie weather is what’s happening around the world. Scientists have told us time is running out; not everyone is listening or feels the urgency to act aggressively like Bronwyn intensely does. Everything about these novels is intense, including Emmons’ gifted prose.
Bronwyn “does not read people as she reads the earth.” She “burns hotter” with her “gutsy, mercurial nature.” Her mother died five years ago, leaving her awfully alone. Except when she’s in Nature, the “perfect solution for soothing a human being,” when she’s not “lost in a cyclone of loneliness.” The author’s literary, poetic prose is gorgeous: sometimes expressed meteorologically.
Emmons writes about the human condition of loneliness and how the devastation of climate change has caused profound loneliness. In Sinking Islands, we’re taken to more places around the globe where climate destruction has either transformed or threatens to erase their beauty. The mood in both novels isn’t just gloom and doom, though; it’s also wonderment and awe of Nature’s therapeutic powers and why we must find therapies to save and heal our aching planet.
If you think the premise is too wacky, too science-fiction-y, consider a proven scientific concept cited called the Butterfly Effect. The phenomenon captures Bronwyn’s moral dilemma when she finally accepts she can change weather (Book 1). The video below explains the theory as: “Small things in a complex system may have no effect or a massive one, and it is virtually impossible to know which will turn out to be the case”:
https://youtu.be/r2zOZ2WW8HE
In both novels, but more seriously in Sinking Islands, Bronwyn thinks not only of the potential benefits of her power but of unintended, harmful consequences. Described as a “thinker,” we get to see how she thinks and how her thinking evolves starting with the first time she’s done something unbelievable with a storm atop Mt. Washington in New Hampshire, famous for its extreme weather.
Initially, she thinks whatever she’d done is an aberration; we think it’s a weird coincidence. When she influences weather again, she thinks something’s wrong in her brain. When it happens again, she’s tormented by thinking she’s “coming unhinged,” having a nervous breakdown, or experiencing early onset dementia. When a witness sees how she stopped rain at a wedding, it spreads virally. Add a couple more witnesses to other weather conditions and she’s disgusted that she’s lost her privacy. Until she starts wondering could she do it again? Then tests herself in Kansas and Oklahoma’s Tornado Alley, later California’s wildfire country. Weather Woman tracks her evolution.
Sinking Islands raises the stakes from what one individual can do to experimenting with teaching others since she alone cannot possibly change the weather around the world. In Book 1 she’s “in love with the world like never before”; in Book 2 she spreads that love to a select group ripe for her interventions as they’re from beautiful places that global warming has despoiled. Their coming together isn’t just a statement about making a difference ecologically, but how doing so affects our relationships and humanity.
Weather Woman opens with Bronwyn’s doctoral studies under the mentorship of Professor Diane Fenwick, whom she’s known since she was eighteen; Diane convinced her to pursue academic science. They became very close friends; Diane loves her like the daughter and child she never had. (Happily married to Joe, a novelist who spends time in their cozy cottage in Maine to write). Mentor and mentee have two different personalities: Diane, the “extrovert” confident and commanding; “painfully shy” Bronwyn unsure of herself.
Hard sciences at an elite institution is a tough place for a woman. Bronwyn is constantly mocked by male students to such a degree that she questions and then decides she’s not cut out for academia and leaves the program to Diane’s great dismay, which continues into the sequel. Moving to southern New Hampshire to work as a meteorologist on TV, Bronwyn rents a secluded cabin in the woods overlooking a peaceful river. One day a reporter from Florida, Matt, shows up at the station and is immediately attracted to her. Their story is intense. How could it not be given Bronwyn’s intensity? Unlike Diane, a doubter of anything unless backed up by scientific data, he’s heard about Bronwyn’s otherworldly power, doesn’t believe it either but willing to turn his life upside down to be with her. Joe, whose career relies on imagination, is open-minded too, along with a few other believers appearing in one or both novels.
It’s Diane’s belief in Bronwyn that matters most. But her reaction is that this isn’t “thinking outside the-box – this is thinking outside the range of known human capability.” The reader will see whether Diane comes around or not in Sinking Islands.
Emmons, who taught creative writing and screenwriting at the University of Oregon, describes herself as a “word-lover” and “people lover” – both on full display. Sinking Islands has an even more ambitious reach than Weather Woman, but both are remarkable and thought-provoking.
The sinking island earns the title of Book 2 because it’s more momentous than a “discrete thing” as “all oceans are connected.” Located in the South Pacific, it could be any of the “islands of plastic” in which “apocalyptic” floods have washed plastics onto the shore, overwhelming sewage systems spreading “industrial chemicals, and human waste, and algae bloom, and deadly bacteria.” Two characters stand out in the island storyline: eleven-year-old Penina who has “limitless energy” like Bronwyn, and her lonely father Analu. He and Nahani, his wife, have already grieved the loss of their other two children who drowned from the high waters, so they decided to leave the island despite a dying grandmother’s wish not to. For Analu, the island has become a “winking hologram of beauty and sadness.”
A different type of “water crisis” is happening in São Paulo, Brazil. Severe drought is “squeezing the verve from everyone.” Felipe, a dancer in the theatre with the body of “Adonis,” is the central character. At forty, he’s single as dance has been his life. “Hydric collapse” means audiences are so on the edge they’re not coming to performances. This once lively city is rioting over water, diseases are spreading from standing water collected in buckets, and reservoirs are alarmingly low for a city that once owned “twelve percent of the world’s fresh water.” “Where does the soul of a city reside?”
Emmons whisks us to the Arctic Circle to draw our attention to magnitudes: survival under the most extreme weather conditions in Greenland, where the melting glaciers remind us of the butterfly effect warming Earth, affecting all of us. Except these hardy, resourceful Greenlanders still feel the “delicious joy of being alive.” Why don’t we, given all we have, the novel asks.
Although these two novels can’t provide answers, the message is we can still do something, individually and as a group. We’ll never have Bronwyn’s mythical ability to “coral” enormous concentration to release enormous energy through the body into the atmosphere, but we can make an effort that can have ripple effects.
Lorraine (EnchantedProse.com)
December 2, 2019
I very much enjoyed this book. The writing is top notch. I've read some of the lower-rated reviews; they merely remind me that there is a wide range of tastes and no one book can appeal to them all. I found the protagonist Bronwyn a compelling, albeit weird, character. I did not find it hard to give myself over to the conceit that Bronwyn has special powers to control the weather and was fascinated to see where the author took the story. I, for one, was not in the least disappointed--quite the contrary. I think a book like this is difficult to pull off and I feel that the author succeeded.
October 3, 2018
Nature exists in a state of civil war sky,
absent a woman's erratic hand,
sky is storm hungry - solar powered insurgency,
burn clouds congregating black and grey.
#poem
Chris Roberts, God to the Face Shifters
absent a woman's erratic hand,
sky is storm hungry - solar powered insurgency,
burn clouds congregating black and grey.
#poem
Chris Roberts, God to the Face Shifters
Read
July 20, 2019Cai Emmons was my husband's teacher at Hammonasset school in Hamden (H.S.). He went to her reading and bought the book. I enjoyed it. It was an interesting look at what is going on with our world's weather. Bronwyn is able to influence and change the weather. She stops a tornado, stops a forest fire, and stops rain on her friend's wedding day. It's a little far-fetched, but boy would it be great if someone could help out...especially during this crazy heat wave.
September 27, 2021
Cai Eamons has an important story to tell. I so appreciated the deep and beautiful descriptions of our “best places”. She is also adept in describing intimate interior landscapes and complex relationships. I’m recommending this to everyone.
July 4, 2018
When Bronwyn realizes she has the ability to change the atmosphere around her, she feels woefully unqualified for the job. How much can she do, and how far can she go, and what is the purpose of this gift? Following her intuition, she boldly takes on catastrophes, but like a doctor, she understands that she must first do no harm. With an unusual story, Emmons writes a tale full of science, faith, exploration, and maybe even love.
July 23, 2018
Bronwyn has always been enthralled by the weather, but partway through her graduate studies in climate science at MIT, she loses her sense of purpose and drops out (much to the consternation of her long-time academic adviser and cheerleader) to take a job as the weather girl on a small-town TV station. As she spends her first year there figuring out her future path, something unexpected happens: she senses that she has somehow developed the power to actually change the weather. She feels driven to use this new-found power for good, but struggles with what that means and how to follow her path without attracting unwanted attention or disdain.
This is a weird book, but in a good way, I think. The most basic element of the story - a person trying to find their path in the world, finding a way to be true to themselves without upsetting the people they love - is certainly not new, but the framing of the story is completely original. The author uses the mystical weather power as a catalyst for a young woman who has been spinning her wheels for years to find her true power, and in doing so, cement her most important relationships into accepting her as she is, not just as they want her to be.
This is a weird book, but in a good way, I think. The most basic element of the story - a person trying to find their path in the world, finding a way to be true to themselves without upsetting the people they love - is certainly not new, but the framing of the story is completely original. The author uses the mystical weather power as a catalyst for a young woman who has been spinning her wheels for years to find her true power, and in doing so, cement her most important relationships into accepting her as she is, not just as they want her to be.
August 27, 2019
I enjoyed the author's concept more than I enjoyed the book. My first reaction was that creative writing has changed with the advent of the many software programs designed to perfect writing styles. I felt like I was reading from one of the popular editing programs where synonyms are routinely suggested. I guess that I look more for the heart of a story than for perfect sentences spun and rearranged by popular software. The story moved, yet, I expected more suspense, more magic, and deeper characters. I applaud Ms. Emmons' mission to bring global warming and other environmental issues to the forefront, but she has a way to go, to find her unique voice.
September 7, 2019
Ignore the cover of this book...I’m glad I did. Magical realism and climate change work really well together in this well-paced novel. I liked the characters and it was a fun quick read.
October 26, 2025
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: 30-year-old Bronwyn Artair, feeling out of place in her doctoral program in Atmospheric Sciences at MIT, drops out and takes a job as a TV meteorologist, much to the dismay of her mentor, Diane Fenwick. After a year of living alone in Southern New Hampshire, enduring the indignities of her job, dumped by her boyfriend, she discovers her deep connection to the natural world has given her an ability to affect natural forces.
When she finally accepts she really possesses this startling capability, she must then negotiate a new relationship to the world. Who will she tell? Who will believe her? Most importantly, how will she put this new skill of hers to use? As she seeks answers to these questions, she travels to Kansas to see the tornado maverick she worships; falls in love with Matt, the tabloid journalist who has come to investigate her; visits fires raging out of control in Los Angeles; and eventually voyages with Matt and Diane to the methane fields of Siberia.
A woman experiencing power for the first time in her life, she must figure out what she can do for the world without hurting it further. The story poses questions about science and intuition, women and power, and what the earth needs from humans.
I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!
My Review: What the heck are women supposed to do when they discover they have actual, utilizable power? Hide it, or course, because some man somewhere will feel threatened by it because he doesn't have it, or have a way to control it, or simply doesn't like that a woman can do something without needing to check it until a man approves of it.
Meet Bronwyn. She's an ordinary woman in an ordinary relationship with an ordinary man. It ends because he ends it. It ends, in other words, because someone not her has determined her worth is not sufficient to deserve his august attention.
So far this is realist fiction with the twist that the woman has Something Extra. But how she discovers that, what it is, and how extremely valuable it is...that's Cai Emmons' secret story sauce. In giving ordinary-everywoman Bronwyn the Something Extra, Author Emmons is sneaking into a realist-fiction piece the verity that all women have power through the metaphor of A Power. She does this as the world...hers of 2018, ours of 2025...faces unprecednted challenges to our future as a species. This passage in time is very reminiscent of the Black Death in its existential crisis. And here's unregarded Bronwyn discovering she could very well have the means to alter a seemingly inevitable death spiral.
Exploring that is, I think, the reason most reviews and ratings that ridicule and belittle the story are by men. Author Emmons dares to say, "what if a woman has the solution to our crisis? Not because a man worked on it, or because she earned it by studying under men, but in and of herself she possesses the answer, the solution, our collective way out?"
Watch the rats empty from the sinking ship to devour the rope tying us to reality.
That's why I'm offering a full four stars to this cli-fic story of how stupid it is to think you know everything thus shutting down possibly lifesaving ideas from outside your purview.
The Publisher Says: 30-year-old Bronwyn Artair, feeling out of place in her doctoral program in Atmospheric Sciences at MIT, drops out and takes a job as a TV meteorologist, much to the dismay of her mentor, Diane Fenwick. After a year of living alone in Southern New Hampshire, enduring the indignities of her job, dumped by her boyfriend, she discovers her deep connection to the natural world has given her an ability to affect natural forces.
When she finally accepts she really possesses this startling capability, she must then negotiate a new relationship to the world. Who will she tell? Who will believe her? Most importantly, how will she put this new skill of hers to use? As she seeks answers to these questions, she travels to Kansas to see the tornado maverick she worships; falls in love with Matt, the tabloid journalist who has come to investigate her; visits fires raging out of control in Los Angeles; and eventually voyages with Matt and Diane to the methane fields of Siberia.
A woman experiencing power for the first time in her life, she must figure out what she can do for the world without hurting it further. The story poses questions about science and intuition, women and power, and what the earth needs from humans.
I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!
My Review: What the heck are women supposed to do when they discover they have actual, utilizable power? Hide it, or course, because some man somewhere will feel threatened by it because he doesn't have it, or have a way to control it, or simply doesn't like that a woman can do something without needing to check it until a man approves of it.
Meet Bronwyn. She's an ordinary woman in an ordinary relationship with an ordinary man. It ends because he ends it. It ends, in other words, because someone not her has determined her worth is not sufficient to deserve his august attention.
So far this is realist fiction with the twist that the woman has Something Extra. But how she discovers that, what it is, and how extremely valuable it is...that's Cai Emmons' secret story sauce. In giving ordinary-everywoman Bronwyn the Something Extra, Author Emmons is sneaking into a realist-fiction piece the verity that all women have power through the metaphor of A Power. She does this as the world...hers of 2018, ours of 2025...faces unprecednted challenges to our future as a species. This passage in time is very reminiscent of the Black Death in its existential crisis. And here's unregarded Bronwyn discovering she could very well have the means to alter a seemingly inevitable death spiral.
Exploring that is, I think, the reason most reviews and ratings that ridicule and belittle the story are by men. Author Emmons dares to say, "what if a woman has the solution to our crisis? Not because a man worked on it, or because she earned it by studying under men, but in and of herself she possesses the answer, the solution, our collective way out?"
Watch the rats empty from the sinking ship to devour the rope tying us to reality.
That's why I'm offering a full four stars to this cli-fic story of how stupid it is to think you know everything thus shutting down possibly lifesaving ideas from outside your purview.
October 3, 2018
How would you like to order up the weather, just like you order a pizza with pineapple, but no anchovies? That’s the fantasy that comes to life for Bronwyn Artair, a weather forecaster for a rural New England TV station in the novel, Weather Woman. Author Cai Emmons has created a smart, ambitious character struggling to find her place in the universe, until the universe imposes a role she never expected.
Emmons uses magical realism to explore a naive fantasy of control. Most people want to impose order in their lives, perhaps by arranging the furniture in a certain way, or sticking to a particular daily schedule. Ironically, weather is a good way to show how control is an illusion, except for Bronwyn, who can call up a sunny day or a refreshing rain shower as if selecting a new blouse. Climate change figures high in Bronwyn’s weather-related adventures; she faces down tornadoes and firestorms influenced by a warming climate, and toys with the idea of a radical solution to global warming.
Bronwyn feels out of control, or at least uncertain about decisions she’s made in her life. These choices often appear irrational, or at least counter-productive. Her greatest supporter is a former teacher, Diane Fenwick, who starts by wondering if Bronwyn has gone crazy by discounting a talent for science. Later, though, Diane learns that her student’s talent might save the planet. Bronwyn persuades others, including a tabloid journalist who becomes her lover, that her ability is real. However, her nascent community never coalesces. I kept expecting Bronwyn’s character to reach an apotheosis with the help of her friends, but I was left unsatisfied.
Weather Woman is best read as a story about a twenty-something who can’t make lemonade out of life’s lemons. Life is often a journey from crisis to crisis, and our attempts to smooth out the rough edges often fail. Bronwyn struggles with the mercurial nature of life, and even with her amazing power, she never really takes the reins.
The publisher provided a copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review. This review originally appeared on J.G. Follansbee's blog .
Emmons uses magical realism to explore a naive fantasy of control. Most people want to impose order in their lives, perhaps by arranging the furniture in a certain way, or sticking to a particular daily schedule. Ironically, weather is a good way to show how control is an illusion, except for Bronwyn, who can call up a sunny day or a refreshing rain shower as if selecting a new blouse. Climate change figures high in Bronwyn’s weather-related adventures; she faces down tornadoes and firestorms influenced by a warming climate, and toys with the idea of a radical solution to global warming.
Bronwyn feels out of control, or at least uncertain about decisions she’s made in her life. These choices often appear irrational, or at least counter-productive. Her greatest supporter is a former teacher, Diane Fenwick, who starts by wondering if Bronwyn has gone crazy by discounting a talent for science. Later, though, Diane learns that her student’s talent might save the planet. Bronwyn persuades others, including a tabloid journalist who becomes her lover, that her ability is real. However, her nascent community never coalesces. I kept expecting Bronwyn’s character to reach an apotheosis with the help of her friends, but I was left unsatisfied.
Weather Woman is best read as a story about a twenty-something who can’t make lemonade out of life’s lemons. Life is often a journey from crisis to crisis, and our attempts to smooth out the rough edges often fail. Bronwyn struggles with the mercurial nature of life, and even with her amazing power, she never really takes the reins.
The publisher provided a copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review. This review originally appeared on J.G. Follansbee's blog .
November 17, 2018
This book is out now so I can finally talk about it! Full review disclosure: I did a little work on this manuscript and I read it like a year ago.
Anyway, I loved it. It's a hard-to-classify superhero origin story about Bronwyn, a small town meteorologist who wants to stop environmental destruction with her powers (that she receives in a strange way with little reason as to why), her very scientifically intelligent, practical, and delightful older mentor who is also her best friend and mother figure, their conflict over science vs. things that can't be explained, what it would actually be like to learn to use weather powers as a 30-year-old grad school dropout living as a weird hermit in the woods and becoming like a nature goddess, and a sweet doofy tabloid reporter who falls in love with Bronwyn and gets roped into her adventures.
It moves very much like a film, but at the same time not a lot happens. It is mostly just about a group of unconventional people who are coming-of-age as adults, but not in an annoying super literary way, in a way where they are interested and engaged in life around them. There is an overall sense of positivity and generosity towards the world without sacrificing realism that I appreciated. It never falls prey to a kind of reflexive negativity/cynicism. I was pleasantly surprised at each turn when these characters made choices based on being kind, genuine human beings who just want to do good, and who were upset when good wasn’t done. Even the ostensible villain is just a person trying to do his job.
It is a fundamentally optimistic book about human connection and appreciating the world and women having and understanding power not for any "timely" reason, but just because........it is. Also it really sticks the landing; I think about the last paragraphs a lot and I start to cry EVERY time I do. I'm crying thinking about them as I type this RIGHT NOW.
Anyway, I loved it. It's a hard-to-classify superhero origin story about Bronwyn, a small town meteorologist who wants to stop environmental destruction with her powers (that she receives in a strange way with little reason as to why), her very scientifically intelligent, practical, and delightful older mentor who is also her best friend and mother figure, their conflict over science vs. things that can't be explained, what it would actually be like to learn to use weather powers as a 30-year-old grad school dropout living as a weird hermit in the woods and becoming like a nature goddess, and a sweet doofy tabloid reporter who falls in love with Bronwyn and gets roped into her adventures.
It moves very much like a film, but at the same time not a lot happens. It is mostly just about a group of unconventional people who are coming-of-age as adults, but not in an annoying super literary way, in a way where they are interested and engaged in life around them. There is an overall sense of positivity and generosity towards the world without sacrificing realism that I appreciated. It never falls prey to a kind of reflexive negativity/cynicism. I was pleasantly surprised at each turn when these characters made choices based on being kind, genuine human beings who just want to do good, and who were upset when good wasn’t done. Even the ostensible villain is just a person trying to do his job.
It is a fundamentally optimistic book about human connection and appreciating the world and women having and understanding power not for any "timely" reason, but just because........it is. Also it really sticks the landing; I think about the last paragraphs a lot and I start to cry EVERY time I do. I'm crying thinking about them as I type this RIGHT NOW.
May 3, 2023
I really wanted to like this novel, especially because I really liked Cai's first novel, His Mother's Son, and her most recent one, Unleashed. But this novel was a struggle for me. I soldiered on because I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything in total. The last quarter of the book was where things really caught my attention and imagination, and I wish we had gotten there sooner and that the book had spent more time in the Arctic. Most of the book was slowed down for me by the interior monologues and descriptions. It kept the action from moving, it slowed down the dialogue between characters. The ending was a bit of a drop-off for me, especially after all the terrific scenes in the Arctic. Because it was so open-ended, it clearly pointed to a sequel, which there is one. I have Sinking Islands, and I'll read that one, too. I hope it carries forward the promise and the energy that the scenes in the Arctic provided me, the reader.
July 4, 2019
Weather Woman will make a great movie. Bronwyn has a super power to leave all the current heroines in the dust. She controls wind, rain and fire with the strength of her will. She sends her powers into the earth itself and may even be able to (gasp!) reverse climate change.
Yes. Climate Change. There's a buzz word for you.
Writers have always used novels to focus attention on worthy causes. Weather Woman is about more than Bronwyn, just as Oliver Twist is about more than one English orphan. I applaud the author for that effort. However, Emmons is not Charles Dickens.
The novel is sprinkled with unnecessary long obscure words. Also, Bronwyn breaks up with a long time boyfriend and finds a new love. The romance is well written, but honestly, if I wanted to read a romance I wouldn't have picked up Weather Woman.
Yes. Climate Change. There's a buzz word for you.
Writers have always used novels to focus attention on worthy causes. Weather Woman is about more than Bronwyn, just as Oliver Twist is about more than one English orphan. I applaud the author for that effort. However, Emmons is not Charles Dickens.
The novel is sprinkled with unnecessary long obscure words. Also, Bronwyn breaks up with a long time boyfriend and finds a new love. The romance is well written, but honestly, if I wanted to read a romance I wouldn't have picked up Weather Woman.
August 3, 2019
I picked this up at AWP this year because the premise sounded interesting, but I’m a bit disappointed. While the language was often beautiful, the story moved at a glacial (no pun intended) pace. It felt like it needed an extra round of editing to trim down the descriptions and scenes, and maybe lose fifty or sixty pages. And while part of me liked the exploration of the mundanities of having a ‘superpower’ (who would believe you? what are the repercussions?), the speculative element was then made extremely boring, which, as someone who both reads and writes a lot of speculative fiction, was not appealing to me.
May 9, 2019
Cai Emmons's new novel has a fabulous—in every meaning of that word—premise. Imagine someone being able to control the weather. It is *supernatural*, but Emmons presents, develops, and folds this ability of the main character, Bronwyn, into the novel in such a way that the reader is pulled along by not so much this extraordinary idea, but by the intriguing characters and the compelling plot. And her descriptions are marvelous: certainly when Bronwyn tackles rain and fire and even cyclones, but also as Emmons offers us emotion and landscape and human feeling. Highly recommended.
October 14, 2020
Excellent
This book was really well researched and well written. I found the characters somewhat stereotypical but I think in this book it is necessary to bring about the plot. I really like the idea that people can be really excellent in unquantifiable ways. I would reccomend this book.
This book was really well researched and well written. I found the characters somewhat stereotypical but I think in this book it is necessary to bring about the plot. I really like the idea that people can be really excellent in unquantifiable ways. I would reccomend this book.
November 27, 2019
Beautifully written tale of love and climate change. The author artfully evoked the both the beauty and the terror of weather, the tension between science and the unexplainable, and the fierce love that is the feminine heart.
December 29, 2020
Needs work as a together story
What I loved were all the weather words I had to look up and even not weather words too. It was refreshing after reading most contemporary books.... but the crux of the story was in great need of tweaking.
Also the dashing from one end of America and then to the Artic... umm as it said tweaking would help.
What I loved were all the weather words I had to look up and even not weather words too. It was refreshing after reading most contemporary books.... but the crux of the story was in great need of tweaking.
Also the dashing from one end of America and then to the Artic... umm as it said tweaking would help.
June 19, 2023
The novel is well written and an enjoyable read with one exception. The two female characters, Diane and Bronwyn, were infuriating to me. Both Diane and Bronwyn made decisions and behaved in ways that would have caused me to avoid them.
September 16, 2024
Loved it. Meet a whimsical Capatain Planet, a space cadet buffeted Internal conflict and driven to adventure. A steady drip of rare thesauraus words wrapped in poetry igniting immersion and love for the world around us.
June 26, 2019
Compassionate and involving. Interesting take on eco-fiction.
June 10, 2020
Loved the character of Bronwyn & the overall dreamlike, magical realism of this story. Super rushed ending though. 4.5/5
January 3, 2021
Power unleashed in unexpected ways
This book will entertain people who observe weather phenomena as well as those who ever wondered what the life of a super hero could be like.
This book will entertain people who observe weather phenomena as well as those who ever wondered what the life of a super hero could be like.
January 23, 2021
Usually, but not always, I'm pretty grounded in realism, but not today. This book about a woman who finds that she can affect the weather was a pretty good story. Three and one-half stars.
March 26, 2019
I loved this book. It's beautifully written, fantastical and lovely.
I had to keep reading it to find out where the tale would twist to next (not trying to make deliberate weather puns).
I first heard the author read from this book before it was published and looked forward to reading it once it was out. I wasn't disappointed.
I had to keep reading it to find out where the tale would twist to next (not trying to make deliberate weather puns).
I first heard the author read from this book before it was published and looked forward to reading it once it was out. I wasn't disappointed.
February 21, 2019
I tried reading but couldn’t finish. The author uses way too many science words in the text to sound like she knows what she’s talking about, but in reality that’s not how meteorologists tend to talk/think (I have a B.S. in Meteorology so I like to think I know what I’m talking about.) It’s a slow start and the writing really isn’t that great. I’m not going to waste my time when my TBR list is so long.
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