Nightshining
A Memoir in Four Floods
Jennifer Kabat’s pensive, poetic memoir Nightshining explores the connections between local waterways and stories of family, community, and climate change.
Using “hydrology as a governing principle,” the narrative addresses the impact of floods on the small town of Margaretville in the Catskills. Floods in 2006 and 2011 were caused by heavy rainfall that inundated waterways, including a creek near Kabat’s home: “This place where we have moved keeps washing away.” The 2011 flood, in the wake of Hurricane Irene, was particularly destructive. Kabat describes the crumbling of her home’s foundation as well as the impacts on others across the region; she observes that the incidence of tornadoes, thunderstorms, record heat, and other catastrophic weather is accelerating: “Now Biblical years come every year.”
Kabat also juxtaposes evocative accounts of her personal history, including memories of her father, with stories from human and geological history, describing the floodplains of the Devonian Sea 390 million years ago, glacial melt during the Ice Age, and the displacement of the Mohawk people by settlers in the 1770s. Two twentieth-century floods caused by human engineering are also covered. In the 1950s, the Delaware River was dammed to create the Pepacton Reservoir as a water source for New York City; villages were submerged and homesteads confiscated through eminent domain. In 1950, the “Rainmaker’s Flood” resulted when the clouds were seeded with silver iodide, using a technique developed at a nearby General Electric lab as a weapon during the Cold War. The intent of the cloud seeding was to relieve a severe drought, but the project instead resulted in multiple storms and flooding. Kabat’s use of water as a unifying element enhances the lush, layered narrative and underscores a message of human vulnerability.
Nightshining is a provocative memoir that considers how a community’s waterways reflect its history and portend future impacts of climate change.
Reviewed by
Kristen Rabe
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