Francesca G. Varela, Call of the Sun Child (2014)
Content warning:
Death
Synopsis
Call of the Sun Child is about 16-year-old Sempra, who lives in the Circadia Stable Living facility where she and everyone she’s ever known have never been outside. 150 years before Sempra’s life, the climate crisis wrecked the earth, causing mass disease and the destruction of the ozone layer. Now, inside the windowless facility, they are told that it is the only safe place and warned of the outside world. Sempra finds herself curious of what is outside of the facility, though, and contemplates leaving more and more as the years go on. Sempra’s only friend Alden sparks her to think about the world outside, and how they are controlled inside the facility with the finding of an ancient object, a book. The contents of the book make her question what she’s been told about the outside world as evil, dangerous and unlivable. Eventually, the mundane life and heartbreak she experiences in the facility lead to her making the impossible decision to leave.
Essay
Varela’s climate dystopia is equally harrowing and heartwarming. The outdoors is nothing like she ever expected, and will remind those familiar with the Willamette Valley and the general Pacific Northwest of the lush environments here. Some of the callouts throughout the novel include details like miner’s lettuce, huckleberries, native conifer trees, ferns up to your knees, getting cut with blackberry bushes and descriptions of old growth forests similar to our own in Oregon. Many of these elements exist beyond Oregon, but the amalgamation and Varela’s life outside of the novel really help to situate the fictional world somewhere in Oregon. Plants like the wild huckleberries and what I picture as large sword ferns between the trees begin to shape an image of our valley forests.
Sempra’s reactions to the forests and landscapes that she describes throughout are full of adoration as she muses that “everything here is old, so old,” when interacting with huge trees, reminiscent of the reactions to Oregon’s old growth now (91). As the flora and fauna start to pile up in name, and as Sempra learns what they are, my own experiences of Oregon as a child come rushing back, along with the magic. Varela herself writes about Oregon’s natural landscapes on a weekly blog which comes through in the novel with lines like “Ferns drape over my shins. This is their world, not mine, I tell myself as leaves bloom over my head,” leaving the reader imagining an array of lush ferns between the trees, a common sight to be found in Oregon forests (112). Because Sempra is experiencing being outside for the first time readers get to experience her excitement with it as their own, and like Sempra, it makes us want to get out from inside. It might be that by simultaneously experiencing the fictional, but very accurate, Oregon landscapes with Sempra throughout the novel, we as readers find a renewed sense of appreciation for it in our lives. Personally, the mere mention of Steller’s Jays in the novel managed to renew my appreciation for the massive amounts in my own backyard.
The events that forced Sempra and her family away from the natural world over the last century and a half echo the climate change fears and realities outside of the novel, rising seas, a dangerous sun, wildfire concerns when she finds a burnt patch of forest. Oregon, especially, is no stranger to wildfires, and it is details like this that show Varela’s care and concern for Oregon throughout the novel. The likeness to our current reality also makes us want to hold our forests close so that we too can appreciate the beauty that Sempra is experiencing.
Author Bio
Francesca G. Varela grew up in Oregon and has a lifelong passion for Oregon’s natural beauty and native plants and animals. She writes poetry and about nature on her blog, in addition to her environmental novel writing. She has 4 novels currently published which are Blue Mar, The Seas of Distant Stars, and Listen.