The Year of No Summer

On April 10th, 1815, Indonesia's Mount Tambora erupted. The resulting build-up of ash in the stratosphere altered weather patterns and led, in 1816, to a year without a summer. Instead, there were June snowstorms, food shortages, epidemics, inventions, and the proliferation of new cults and religious revivals.

In these linked lyric essays, Lebowitz not only charts the events and effects of the apocalyptic year, but also weaves in history, fairytale, mythology, and memoir to ruminate on weather and the natural world, motherhood, transformation, war, the human appetite for destruction, and our search for God and meaning in times of disaster.