The catastrophic events in Brittney Corrigan’s collection, The Ghost Town Collectives and other stories of the Anthropocene, could happen as soon as tomorrow, in a decade or three, or maybe yesterday. Rogue human cells, hurricanes, shorelines crumbling and glaciers melting, disappearing species, extended drought, a deadly pandemic: catastrophes take place in story after story, narrative strands that spiral and repeat like Vico’s theory of history, or maybe a history of faith. Will science save us? That’s a question. As a collection, the stories are a lovely elegy for the earth shifting under our feet.

Another question that Corrigan returns to is, who or what can survive when the ecological shit hits the fan? Corrigan’s characters embody human resilience and/or resignation as they confront a poisoned natural world run amok. Most of the characters don’t flinch too much, knowing the present is unprecedented because it has never happened before, this exact moment, until it happens again. The movingly drawn characters are ciphers who resonate with dreams, desires, and despair. I am in love with Silje in the story, “The Vault,” who is the keeper of the Global Seed Vault, and the last living human in the cold, remote town where it’s located. Silje’s isolation generates suspense due to naturalism’s mandate that those who live alone must die alone. Even a pyrrhic victory feels like a miracle. Corrigan inhabits the consciousnesses of sentient beings indiscriminately, reminding us humans are animals when she inhabits the mind of a polar bear or a cheetah.

If alone we are doomed, together we might find purpose, company, and compassion, even in a polluted world. The most optimistic story, “The Auction House,” is a steam punk fantasy involving costumes and a mystery auction where the villain is a megalomaniac. The most tender story is, “The Care Home,” where a toxic Gorgon and other “Mythics” find domestic peace, love, and acceptance. A few characters demonstrate optimism, a surprise given the collection’s theme of imminent extinction.

Creature suffering and ecological crisis frequently mirror each other, like the dry twig of an anorexic body reflected in a drought-stricken orchard. One of the pleasures of the collection is the ways the details dovetail to achieve well-wrought narrative arcs. Nature is an enigma, as “The Great Unconformity,” reminds us, with “one billion years of missing geologic time,” apparent in layers of sedimentary rock. We can catalog the rock, take pictures of the rock, and generate hypothesis, but the rock stares mutely back.

Not all characters are so reticent. In the story, “Over and Back,” Martha/Marty, a senior in high school, dreams of leaving the island in Chesapeake Bay where she lives to become an NBA referee. She wants to leave before the island is washed away by the rising sea. While adults on the island talk about “politicians and seawalls, still thinking something can be done,” adolescent Marty is a realist. She rages into the face of a raging hurricane and calls foul by blowing her whistle.  

Is it a happy ending when the last creature through the gate to extinction is a worn out, world-weary human? Brittney Corrigan’s debut story collection is a must-read for those of us who despair that the world is on fire, who feel alienated and even terrified of the next catastrophe or virus. Maybe we’ve pissed on the fire with lighter fluid and won’t even kiss our cousins, but Corrigan’s characters make me feel less alone. Her book is good company, even chivalric at times, and worth reading until the last embers fade.