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From the Caves
*WINNER of the 2021 Foreword Indie Book Award in Literature* Environmental catastrophe has driven four people inside the dark throat of a Sky, a child coming of age; Tie, pregnant and grieving; Mark, a young man poised to assume primacy; and Teller, an elder, holder of stories. As the devastating heat of summer grows, so does the poison in Teller’s injured leg and the danger of Tie’s imminent labor, food and water dwindling while the future becomes increasingly dependent on the words Sky gleans from the dead, stories pieced together from recycled knowledge, fragmented histories, and half-buried creation myths. From the Caves presents the past, present, and future in tandem, reshaping ancient and modern ideas of death and motherhood, grief and hope, endings and beginnings.
144 pages, Paperback
First published April 10, 2021
5 people are currently reading
433 people want to read
About the author
Thea Prieto
2 books44 followersThea Prieto is the author of From the Caves (August, 2021), which won the Red Hen Novella Award. She is a recipient of the Laurels Award Fellowship, as well as a finalist for the international Edwin L. Stockton, Jr. Award and Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers. Her work has appeared at Longreads, The Kenyon Review, CRAFT Literary Magazine, and New Orleans Review, among other journals, and she writes and edits for Poets & Writers and The Gravity of the Thing. She teaches creative writing at Portland State University and Portland Community College.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
April 3, 2024
Real Rating: 4.75* of five, rounded up because it said so very much in so few words
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: As tough as it is to sit in my air-conditioned room, with my instant access to hot and cold clean running water, my adequate...ample...luxuriously lush supply of food and think of the horrors to come for all those I'll leave behind in a decade or so, I am not required (yet) to decide if someone should live or die.
And that is the new standard I'll measure my irks and crotchets against: Did I have to decide whether someone else lived the rest of this day? No? Well then, belt up.
The story we're being told here in this novella is a simple one: How will Humanity sustain itself when the Earth declines to forgive us our trespasses any more? Five people, a remnant of the Los Angeles that once was, are living—eking an existence—on the shores of the Enemy Ocean in what was once Pasadena, near the Observatory. This information is lodged in the simple, basic words that Author Prieto puts in our sad, burning, withering climate-changed humans' mouths, but you need to be familiar with the place to get it.
As we meet Sky, he is doing something mundane until there is a major event: Someone falls from a height onto the shore. And just like that, five become four. It was Green, the group...made up of teenaged Mark (so called for his nasal damage), Teller the story-rememberer, Tie who is very heavily pregnant, and Sky the lad who will be our third person close-camera point of view...leader of sorts, the one who knew the reasons to put up the fog net to catch water only until the summer storms become too violent and how to grow their food-tubers in a dark cave that was once a lower floor, where a removable brick can bring in only enough scorching, sizzling light to enable it to grow...you see how crucial he was. The sun and the ocean grew more menacing with his loss.
There is so much wrong with this picture...but the story is merely drawing its breath.
When I say "story," I want to be sure you're with me. This is a story. This story is, like every story you and I and all our ancestors have heard, seen, read, invented, based on an established need: Humans need stories to live. And this story, the one I want you to go spend your United States or Canadian or Australian or New Zealand dollars on, is rooted in ancestral stories of its own. I'm sure the repetition of the word "cave" will have its desired effect as a summoning bell for your memory sooner or later....
And there is another story that Author Prieto retells, one that is a favorite of mine, from that same Ancient source. Here it goes by the name of Bear and Moon, and its lovely lineaments should summon you back to a symposium from longer ago than any of these characters can even conceptualize. Tie, heavily pregnant with the future, tells her men that she will accept nothing less than memories to put with the ones she already has.
It is a deeply meaningful moment. It is spoken from a heartbroken place. But it is, like all of Life, a burden she carries alone. In such a small group, each person carries their burdens alone despite the constant demands of survival. Even Sky, all of nine or ten when the story takes place; he's never forgiven for the crime of just Being when it cost his mother her life to make him. The group is in a terrible way. The can just barely pull it together to subsist...scrape by. No wonder the too-young-to-help Sky treasures words, "deep scratches of words" as Author Prieto calls them; although Lonely will always mean more than it probably should for one without blame for the hate he carries from his angry, unforgiving brother Mark. A moment when "Sky asks, what's an apple?" on hearing the word in a story...Poor poor pod of people...what a dry, hateful world they can't escape from is in the unremitting heat.
Because Teller has an accident as he, over angry Mark's objections, gives dead Green a funeral oration. Tie, pregnant with Green's child, has no strength for arguing, just follows doggedly as Teller gives his burning friend a farewell. But that accident...in a world with no food, you can be sure there's no Neosporin, and Teller slowly succumbs to an infection. In his long, wretched death the group comes to a new configuration, one that will have to last them for a long while. The burdens of existence are horrifyingly out of proportion to the endless luxury of those "progeny" who came before enjoyed.
The entire story will take you two, two and a half hours to read. But, if you're at all a sensitive soul, you'll spend that long afterwards thinking about the Code Red IPCC report just issued. If you're reading one of my reviews, you're 99% likely already on board with the "stories = survival" articles I've linked above. Now I want this to be clear to you, in case it isn't already: Author Thea Prieto has told us a fable of the lives our descendants can look forward to living if we don't heed that Code Red. She's done so by harking back to foundational stories Western readers are, or are very likely to be, familiar with. And in doing this she's created a story that, while all her own, owes its life to the unimaginable, incalculable, and unsustainable privilege we're enjoying.
I very deeply and humbly encourage you to buy and read this story as a work of literature that transcends its simple existence as that and offers you a hand held out in hope: We will not die; but we can, and should, and must do better than we are now doing. Our children's children's children need us to.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: As tough as it is to sit in my air-conditioned room, with my instant access to hot and cold clean running water, my adequate...ample...luxuriously lush supply of food and think of the horrors to come for all those I'll leave behind in a decade or so, I am not required (yet) to decide if someone should live or die.
And that is the new standard I'll measure my irks and crotchets against: Did I have to decide whether someone else lived the rest of this day? No? Well then, belt up.
The story we're being told here in this novella is a simple one: How will Humanity sustain itself when the Earth declines to forgive us our trespasses any more? Five people, a remnant of the Los Angeles that once was, are living—eking an existence—on the shores of the Enemy Ocean in what was once Pasadena, near the Observatory. This information is lodged in the simple, basic words that Author Prieto puts in our sad, burning, withering climate-changed humans' mouths, but you need to be familiar with the place to get it.
As we meet Sky, he is doing something mundane until there is a major event: Someone falls from a height onto the shore. And just like that, five become four. It was Green, the group...made up of teenaged Mark (so called for his nasal damage), Teller the story-rememberer, Tie who is very heavily pregnant, and Sky the lad who will be our third person close-camera point of view...leader of sorts, the one who knew the reasons to put up the fog net to catch water only until the summer storms become too violent and how to grow their food-tubers in a dark cave that was once a lower floor, where a removable brick can bring in only enough scorching, sizzling light to enable it to grow...you see how crucial he was. The sun and the ocean grew more menacing with his loss.
As he climbs across the dunes and back into the quiet darkness of the caves, Sky wishes he could see the floating green and sparkling things Green liked to describe, wishes he could imagine people traveling by land and sea, but it's easier to remember sadness, thirst, and hunger when the ocean is an endless expanse of brown waves, a wide desert of seawater broken only by the distant, half-submerged remains of Old City. Out to sea, the torn shell of a single skyscraper and a lone section of a bridge loom out of the white-capped breakers, and the empty windows facing the beach are only sightless squares to Sky. Even though low tide reveals the flat tops of road signs and the hollow heads of street lamps, the only happiness Sky can summon from the past is remote, quiet, and small.
There is so much wrong with this picture...but the story is merely drawing its breath.
When I say "story," I want to be sure you're with me. This is a story. This story is, like every story you and I and all our ancestors have heard, seen, read, invented, based on an established need: Humans need stories to live. And this story, the one I want you to go spend your United States or Canadian or Australian or New Zealand dollars on, is rooted in ancestral stories of its own. I'm sure the repetition of the word "cave" will have its desired effect as a summoning bell for your memory sooner or later....
Maybe it would help to hear the story again. We don't have to sing it like Song or—Tie pauses—or remember all of Green's words. We can tell the story any way we want.
Tie looks at the globe, at the Moth message, and then at Mark.
We will remember and make new memories at the same time, she says.
And there is another story that Author Prieto retells, one that is a favorite of mine, from that same Ancient source. Here it goes by the name of Bear and Moon, and its lovely lineaments should summon you back to a symposium from longer ago than any of these characters can even conceptualize. Tie, heavily pregnant with the future, tells her men that she will accept nothing less than memories to put with the ones she already has.
It is a deeply meaningful moment. It is spoken from a heartbroken place. But it is, like all of Life, a burden she carries alone. In such a small group, each person carries their burdens alone despite the constant demands of survival. Even Sky, all of nine or ten when the story takes place; he's never forgiven for the crime of just Being when it cost his mother her life to make him. The group is in a terrible way. The can just barely pull it together to subsist...scrape by. No wonder the too-young-to-help Sky treasures words, "deep scratches of words" as Author Prieto calls them; although Lonely will always mean more than it probably should for one without blame for the hate he carries from his angry, unforgiving brother Mark. A moment when "Sky asks, what's an apple?" on hearing the word in a story...Poor poor pod of people...what a dry, hateful world they can't escape from is in the unremitting heat.
Because Teller has an accident as he, over angry Mark's objections, gives dead Green a funeral oration. Tie, pregnant with Green's child, has no strength for arguing, just follows doggedly as Teller gives his burning friend a farewell. But that accident...in a world with no food, you can be sure there's no Neosporin, and Teller slowly succumbs to an infection. In his long, wretched death the group comes to a new configuration, one that will have to last them for a long while. The burdens of existence are horrifyingly out of proportion to the endless luxury of those "progeny" who came before enjoyed.
The entire story will take you two, two and a half hours to read. But, if you're at all a sensitive soul, you'll spend that long afterwards thinking about the Code Red IPCC report just issued. If you're reading one of my reviews, you're 99% likely already on board with the "stories = survival" articles I've linked above. Now I want this to be clear to you, in case it isn't already: Author Thea Prieto has told us a fable of the lives our descendants can look forward to living if we don't heed that Code Red. She's done so by harking back to foundational stories Western readers are, or are very likely to be, familiar with. And in doing this she's created a story that, while all her own, owes its life to the unimaginable, incalculable, and unsustainable privilege we're enjoying.
I very deeply and humbly encourage you to buy and read this story as a work of literature that transcends its simple existence as that and offers you a hand held out in hope: We will not die; but we can, and should, and must do better than we are now doing. Our children's children's children need us to.
July 26, 2021
I was so moved by this novella. Each sentence is precisely crafted, each moment rendered with such specificity that the world, even in its literal darkness, is vivid throughout. Grief for the toxic, overheated planet--and for the way the pressure of surviving it hardens human behavior--powers the narrative, but so does faith in human kindness and generosity.
July 14, 2021
This darkly stunning novella is a macroscopic look into the lives of a handful of survivors living in a ruined world that, with one false move, will kill them. Considering themes of family, legacy, and the way stories create our meaning of the world, this book reveals the complexities of human choices for survival and what it means to be alive.
August 28, 2021
I am just floored. What a gut-wrenching story about what may come. The strength and weakness of each character at different points in the story, and the thread of hope in a hopeless situation, was emblematic of the best and worst of us in moments of desperation and triumph. The characters' storytelling throughout this novella is creatively done and utilized to provide comfort, entertainment and hope. I think this is especially true as Sky begins to understand that stories and writing are the only way to keep their history alive, while also hoping for an intangible, better, future. I was definitely in tears by the end and know I'll be thinking of the deeper messages for days to come. It's a quick read and you should absolutely check this one out.
Read
June 2, 2025DNF. Couldn’t get into it early on
May 6, 2022
A stunning story about loss and survival. Prieto's writing is vivid, spare, and her characters are a memorable mix of archetypes, myths, and sensibilities. FROM THE CAVES is helping me think through the power of storytelling during moments of crisis: "Stories–the spoken symbols of remembering. Not gifts from the gods, but words to remind us of what was." Though devastating, the book is full of care and hope.
August 20, 2021
This was a short, powerful book about environmental collapse and the very bleak dystopian life of four humans. The book left me with some intense feelings and some questions. I thought it was very clever, the way violence (like the mushroom cloud) had been distilled through generations to come to mean something else to our future selves. The story felt very raw for me, and my emotions felt scrubbed by grit once I had finished. I definitely thought about it for hours after I finished reading. Survival is such an intense instinct that it goes beyond conscious thought sometimes. Prieto did a great job at removing systems of morality from the story, which I thought was great. It gave the story a fresh, but sad, feeling to the book that I thought it needed. The absence of morality was not a bad thing, it just meant that the pressure of other overt systems were removed and we saw the characters truly struggle with the desperation of survival when there is nothing else for them to do but that. It also made me think of the privilege of childhood, and how it a world where your greatest act of rebellion is to survive childhood does not exist. There is only the work to gain your needs. A very thought and emotional provoking book.
October 17, 2021
Weird and dark but also beautiful and un-put-down-able. Think The Road but told from the child’s point of view and think Oryx and Crake’s Snowman character and the stories and responsibilities he holds. I didn’t always know what was going on in this book, but the sentences were pure love and fire and language that it didn’t always matter. Although it gets easier to understand after the first chapter. Perhaps you need to acclimate the the POV and the language. A lot happens in this small book, in the small cave, and it’s graphic and detailed but also quick and short. I’m probably babbling here but this is a very well written piece of literature.
December 27, 2021
A story book.
January 5, 2022
I really liked this book. It is formatted and has a vibe similar to The Bear by Andrew Krivak, which I rated 5 stars. I read it fairly quickly because it is a novella. If I reread it, the story would be more impactful to me. I would probably feel the themes deeper and understand the myths and stories they told easier.
The story shows these characters coping with an end of the world challenge. They struggle with their positions within the group, leading to understandable anger and resentment within the group. All characters are struggling with the grief of their past group members dying. There is always a threat about whether or not they will survive the day. And one way everyone is maintaining their sanity is through storytelling and keeping the history of their people and the world alive. There are profound emotional themes expressed in the novel: grief, depression, acceptance, end-of-the-world, etc. Prieto writes these themes well and shows that every character deals with the challenges differently.
(Not sure if this will spoil something, so if you haven't read the book, maybe don't read the following paragraphs).
Sky was sitting in the background throughout the book, simply struggling to fit in and find where his role was. It wasn't until the end, where everyone else was having issues that he finally stepped into the role he needed. He overcame and pushed through all the problems he had in the past to tackle the present. In the end, he still had the past haunting him, but I think he will be better in the future.
I'm kind of scared about the baby, though, like, she was born and everything, but will she survive? And if she does survive, are the others going to be around long enough, so she isn't alone in the world.
The story shows these characters coping with an end of the world challenge. They struggle with their positions within the group, leading to understandable anger and resentment within the group. All characters are struggling with the grief of their past group members dying. There is always a threat about whether or not they will survive the day. And one way everyone is maintaining their sanity is through storytelling and keeping the history of their people and the world alive. There are profound emotional themes expressed in the novel: grief, depression, acceptance, end-of-the-world, etc. Prieto writes these themes well and shows that every character deals with the challenges differently.
(Not sure if this will spoil something, so if you haven't read the book, maybe don't read the following paragraphs).
Sky was sitting in the background throughout the book, simply struggling to fit in and find where his role was. It wasn't until the end, where everyone else was having issues that he finally stepped into the role he needed. He overcame and pushed through all the problems he had in the past to tackle the present. In the end, he still had the past haunting him, but I think he will be better in the future.
I'm kind of scared about the baby, though, like, she was born and everything, but will she survive? And if she does survive, are the others going to be around long enough, so she isn't alone in the world.
September 22, 2021
I never quite found my footing with this novella. I couldn't figure out what exactly the author wanted me to focus on and interpret. The only thing I felt sure about was that this novella is climate fiction and warns against the devastation our environment could face. The bleak descriptions of the ocean, heat, and surrounding land were great for that. The author also explores the effect of trying to survive on humanity, which was also interesting. I found the stories distracting because I was trying to interpret them because they took up so much space in the novella. After finishing it, I found myself wondering if the message was simply people need stories to survive. With that interpretation, I found the details distracting. I probably would have enjoyed this one more as a conversation piece, but reading it alone didn't do much for me personally.
Thank you to the publisher for sending me a finished copy.
Thank you to the publisher for sending me a finished copy.
April 28, 2022
Deeply sad, but beautifully written. A study in point of view and voice.
September 6, 2022
From the Caves is a magnificent piece of writing. Absolutely everything is written from the perspective of the characters, who are several generations down from a total societal collapse. You hear their conversations, their inner thoughts, and their struggles to survive, all narrated by a small group of people who have long since lost the words to describe the emotions and the world they find themselves wrapped up in.
To them, everything is myth, stories passed down by storytellers, with pieces of the previous teller(s) versions, mixed in with new flavors from their own interpretation, which you see them add live - including how and why - throughout this book. You see the narrator try to name new feelings and experiences as a patchwork quilt of what few feelings they already know how to describe, which in some ways makes the descriptions all the more powerful than they would be if the character had the perfect word for the moment.
It's stark, harsh, often painful to read, as these are people on the razor's edge of extinction, and they know it. You can see them grapple with loss after loss without the words or experiences to compare. Their innocence chipped away at, but never fully gone because of how much they don't know how to say. There are rays of hope throughout, but it's worth warning that the ending isn't the happy conclusion you might crave, after fully living with these characters for a few hundred pages.
This is the kind of story I can't ever write. It puts you perfectly in the minds of people who are completely foreign to any experience we could have, but at the same time makes them intimately familiar.
It's short, it's wildly different, it's beautiful in a dark way, and entirely worth the read!
*I was slow to read it because I didn't have as much time to read as I usually do, it's perfect for an average long weekend read
To them, everything is myth, stories passed down by storytellers, with pieces of the previous teller(s) versions, mixed in with new flavors from their own interpretation, which you see them add live - including how and why - throughout this book. You see the narrator try to name new feelings and experiences as a patchwork quilt of what few feelings they already know how to describe, which in some ways makes the descriptions all the more powerful than they would be if the character had the perfect word for the moment.
It's stark, harsh, often painful to read, as these are people on the razor's edge of extinction, and they know it. You can see them grapple with loss after loss without the words or experiences to compare. Their innocence chipped away at, but never fully gone because of how much they don't know how to say. There are rays of hope throughout, but it's worth warning that the ending isn't the happy conclusion you might crave, after fully living with these characters for a few hundred pages.
This is the kind of story I can't ever write. It puts you perfectly in the minds of people who are completely foreign to any experience we could have, but at the same time makes them intimately familiar.
It's short, it's wildly different, it's beautiful in a dark way, and entirely worth the read!
*I was slow to read it because I didn't have as much time to read as I usually do, it's perfect for an average long weekend read
October 25, 2021
Tries hard to be a "after the fall" book. The storytelling used by the characters to fill us on in on what went before is too obscure, Trekkies will think darmok and jalad at tanagra. Our story takes place over just a few days and there's two deaths and a birth. Little water and food and illiteracy has become the norm. Our small population is doomed... not even a new baby can save them from the brink of extinction.
Don't read this book. Seriously, you'll want that time back.
Don't read this book. Seriously, you'll want that time back.
December 2, 2021
Rating: 5 Stars
How I'd Describe It:
Four people at the end of the word. Teller, the eldest, is dying and delirious. Mark is the leader, the man who keeps them alive. Tie is the mother, her baby being born soon without its father. Sky is the one coming into himself.
All four of these people are trying to survive. But not all four make it out of the caves alive
How I'd Describe It:
Four people at the end of the word. Teller, the eldest, is dying and delirious. Mark is the leader, the man who keeps them alive. Tie is the mother, her baby being born soon without its father. Sky is the one coming into himself.
All four of these people are trying to survive. But not all four make it out of the caves alive
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 19, 2024
"In the shadows, his loudest words are his oldest"
From the Caves by Thea Prieto narrates the final days of humanity where four characters are faced impending death and suffering. Prieto creates characters that are lush in their perspective and desperate in all aspects of their being. There were so many gratifying moments in this book — Sky rolling around in the mud of Teller's body, Green's lifeless body dragged up the hill, Sky noticing Mark growing blind. The pacing of this story was really well and Prieto excavated a world that wants love in desolation.
Yet, the gorgeous descriptions that Prieto created quickly became overbearing, to the point where they were obscuring the plot and the character, thus leaving me wanting to know more about these characters and how this world came to be. The only character I felt was portrayed well was Sky as we truly see him transition into a person of responsibility and accountability. As the book was coming to a close, the other characters, Teller, Tie, and Mark, quickly became one dimensional. Teller, an old man clinging to tradition and history, Mark, a man who overly prioritizes survival instead of emotions, and Tie, a pregnant women who only wants for the presence of her recently deceased mate.
There was so much potential to this book, so many elements I wanted more from.
From the Caves by Thea Prieto narrates the final days of humanity where four characters are faced impending death and suffering. Prieto creates characters that are lush in their perspective and desperate in all aspects of their being. There were so many gratifying moments in this book — Sky rolling around in the mud of Teller's body, Green's lifeless body dragged up the hill, Sky noticing Mark growing blind. The pacing of this story was really well and Prieto excavated a world that wants love in desolation.
Yet, the gorgeous descriptions that Prieto created quickly became overbearing, to the point where they were obscuring the plot and the character, thus leaving me wanting to know more about these characters and how this world came to be. The only character I felt was portrayed well was Sky as we truly see him transition into a person of responsibility and accountability. As the book was coming to a close, the other characters, Teller, Tie, and Mark, quickly became one dimensional. Teller, an old man clinging to tradition and history, Mark, a man who overly prioritizes survival instead of emotions, and Tie, a pregnant women who only wants for the presence of her recently deceased mate.
There was so much potential to this book, so many elements I wanted more from.
July 25, 2022
A climate changers dream. Or nightmare. Life in the world is ending with fire taking over. Seas of plastic, only food consists only of roots, & water only available by gathering condensation. All of the things. With just a few people left surviving in a cave, fights for survival take over. A short read.
April 6, 2024
good, slow, comforting despite the sad story. wish i knew more backstory on why there were in a dystopia. also what was with the globe with rocks in it??? feel like i missed something with that. i know it was used to kill teller but like idk it was mentioned a lot
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 18, 2025
Sad and raw but real future dystopian novella. I had a little hard time following some of the characters and the language but that might be me, otherwise I would have given it a five. Be ready for the intensity of this story for as short as it is
October 23, 2022
I know this is a novella, but I felt I needed more of a back story to get a understanding of what was going on.
August 27, 2023
very interesting read. it took a bit to get into, it was completely unexpected and unique; the writing style, the plot, the worldbuilding, all of it.
February 24, 2024
I loved this book so much I couldn’t put it down I read it in like 2 hours and I’m going to read it again just because I loved it that much. I reached out to the author to ask some of my own questions and got a reply in less than 24 hours. Such an incredible read I cannot stress that enough. A very sad read but with such an important message.
March 25, 2024
a dark look at the finality of humanity but keeps its grip on hope no matter what. a good look at myth and grief but also hard to grasp at times
June 7, 2025
Pretentious
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews