Overall, we are in as big a fog as Lou about how this all works, and why she is there, accompanying her as she builds a life amongst the civil and financial unrest of early 20th-century California. Sarah, who is on trial for murder, and is the second most consistent voice in The Perishing, does drop the tidbit that she is Lou, many lives hence, and that the dreams, visions, and flashes of deja vu Lou experiences are her memories, both past and future. Natashia Den’s ‘The Perishing’ Takes Us on a Ride Through Time, Love, and Reckoning in America Sarah Neilson Disturbed mom of Coney Island kids found dying told family she drowned. There is a larger, mysterious context around Lou’s appearance in this time and place, and we learn more as Lou does. We know slightly more than she does – when we meet Lou, we’re already a chapter into the book, and have encountered Sarah, a woman 170 years in the future, and Charlie, a young man predating Lou by 30 years, who have something to do with Lou – but we don’t know much. She has no possessions, no identification, and no idea how she got there. Den is also the author of The Perishing (Counterpoint Press, 2021), which was nominated for a 2021 NAACP Image Award. Lou awakens, a 16-year-old girl, nude in an alleyway of 1930s Los Angeles. A Black immortal in 1930s Los Angeles must recover the memory of her past in order to discover who she truly is in this extraordinarily affecting novel for. She also remembers almost nothing of who, or what, she is. She’s young, Black, somewhat naive, and utterly brilliant. And with so many examples in existence, it’s difficult to present readers with a fresh take on the sempiternal trope, but Natashia Deon’s second novel, The Perishing, does exactly that.ĭeon’s immortal, Lou, is unusual. From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Marvel’s Eternals, humans have always dreamt of living forever, and speculated on what it would be like to do so. There’s no way to overstate our obsession with immortality. In Natashia Deón’s second novel, The Perishing, a woman named Lou wakes up in an alley in 1930s Los Angeles with no idea who she is.As the narrative unfolds across intertwined time lines in the.

Natashia deon the perishing