Sometimes pieces of writing just stick with you. The one that comes back to me at odd times (especially since I moved to the West Coast a few years ago) is Kathryn Schulz’s 2015 New Yorker article entitled “The Really Big One.” In it, she spells out in disturbing detail the likely effects of a massive earthquake in the Pacific Northwest that is frighteningly likely to occur in our lifetimes. Apparently, I’m not alone in the impact that article has had on me. Not only did Schulz receive a Pulitzer Prize for her work, she’s also cited as one of the key sources for Emma Pattee’s debut novel, which imagines a cataclysmic earthquake striking present-day Portland, Oregon.

Pattee, a climate journalist who’s turning to fiction for the first time, spells out in her Acknowledgments that she used her journalistic tools of research and fact-checking to try to make the scenarios she’s describing as scientifically accurate as possible. The result is a truly riveting and terrifying portrait of a world turned seemingly upside down, in ways that feel all too plausible and even more frightening as a result.

"Pattee skillfully balances depictions of devastation, cowardice and bravery with moments of deep interiority and even lyricism... TILT is breathless and pensive, imaginative and shockingly real."

TILT is set over the course of a single day, which starts out (as too many of the worst days do) in the most mundane way possible. Annie, who’s 37 weeks pregnant, decides to spend the first day of her maternity leave going to IKEA to pick out the crib that she knows, intellectually, she should have bought and assembled weeks earlier. But money is tight for Annie and her husband, Dom. Although this child (whom she addresses as Bean) was planned for, the impending birth is very much a reminder for Annie of everything she’s about to give up --- and all the other dreams she’s already sacrificed.

Just as Annie is heaving a too-heavy crib onto her flatbed cart in the IKEA warehouse (after a tense altercation with a less than helpful salesperson), the shaking begins. “The shaking is all around me, inside me,” she narrates. “I can’t remember what solid ground feels like.” Annie survives, of course, and thanks to that salesperson, she makes it out from the warehouse and starts walking --- on one of the extremely hot late summer days that are all too common in Portland --- to the café where Dom works.

Growing increasingly thirsty and disoriented, Annie begins to witness both the best and the worst of human nature. And, perhaps in part to help distract herself from what’s going on around her and her fears for Dom, she also recalls memories of their history together. They met when Dom was acting in the prize-winning play that Annie wrote shortly after she dropped out of NYU. According to several people, it was going to launch her career as a promising young playwright.

However, 15 years later, Annie is stuck working at an office job she hates. Her notebooks and drafts are hidden away in cardboard boxes that remain unpacked years after they moved into their current apartment, and she hasn’t written anything new in years. Meanwhile, Dom works at a café because it’s one of the few jobs that gives him enough flexibility to take last-minute acting gigs, as he continues to chase his own dreams of stage stardom.

Although TILT is a terrifyingly plausible chronicle of what the immediate aftermath of a major earthquake in the United States might look like, it’s also a very personal story. Annie’s desperation, the incredibly high stakes of her current moment, prompts ever more visceral reflection on her life leading up to this point. She feels all the same doubts and fears that any new mother might, exacerbated by her concerns for Dom’s safety and her ongoing grief at the loss of her own mother, who died at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Pattee skillfully balances depictions of devastation, cowardice and bravery with moments of deep interiority and even lyricism, especially in the book’s final pages, which (without giving away too much) reminded me of Margaret Atwood’s early novel, SURFACING (another piece of writing that has stuck with me). TILT is breathless and pensive, imaginative and shockingly real. And now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to restock my earthquake survival kit. Because you never know.