Karen Russell’s The Antidote is set in “Uz,” a fictional Nebraska town during the Dust Bowl era. This historical novel unfolds against the backdrop of two actual weather catastrophes: the Black Sunday dust storm of April 14, 1935, and the Republican River flood that occurred a month later following a 24-inch rainfall. These disasters swept through the plains, damaging farmland and deepening the economic effects of the Great Depression. The story begins with Uz already in decline, suffering from both the Great Depression and the prolonged Dust Bowl drought.
Throughout the book, Russell blends real historical experiences with magical elements. The central character is Antonina, a prairie witch known as “the Antidote.” Acting as a healer, she claims the ability to treat her customers by removing the memories that torment them with grief and regret.
The book includes a serial killer murder mystery, basketball, an institution for unwed mothers, and much more. It also explores themes of immigration, settlement, the abuse of Native peoples, and environmental damage.
Other prominent characters include a teenage basketball star and witch’s apprentice whose mother was murdered by a serial killer; the girl’s uncle, a wheat farmer whose land was mysteriously spared from the drought and dust that plagued the region; and a New Deal Resettlement Administration photographer who arrives in Uz to document rural poverty and whose magical camera captures visions of the past and future. Memory serves as a central theme connecting the book’s four eccentric narrators.
The Antidote is Karen Russell’s second novel and a finalist for the National Book Award. Her earlier novel, Swamplandia!, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
Russell, Karen. The Antidote. Knopf. 2025.
