If there is ever a moment when humankind understands how dependent we are on the whims of the Earth, it is at the moment of a devastating earthquake. This moving, complex novel by Katie Welch centers on a woman’s journey through the years leading up to, and the terrible aftermath of, a major seismic event in the Pacific Northwest.

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While this is not a typical environmental novel, it is hard to resist a novel whose opening chapter is narrated by the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate. The plate could be called a minor character, since its voice appears just a few times throughout the book. However, its role is anything but minor – for it is the pressures and shiverings of this plate that create the basis for the story. Anyone who has read the famous New Yorker article “The Really Big One” will want to hear the story of how these horrific circumstances might come to life.

Most of the book centers on Delphine (“Del”) Campion Samara, tracing her difficult childhood, adolescence, and womanhood. Her unsympathetic parents have made plenty of money in oil and retired early to Vancouver Island. There, her asthmatic brother torments her and her only friend moves away, but she finds solace in horseback riding. She tries college, develops a beer habit, but does not connect with her odd roommates. Her life is derailed when she gets pregnant and marries the father, a mustachioed paramedic. They quickly have two more children, and Del is trapped in a conventional suburban life. A series of accidents sends her repeatedly to the hospital, she becomes addicted to painkillers and watches her life begin to spiral.

Then the really big one hits. 

While Del and Prax’s house is not destroyed like those closer to the coast, the quake becomes the turning point that sends her on a rapid downward slope from which she struggles to recover, as the entire region claws its way back to civilization. Here, the book could have become a formulaic “addict is redeemed by kindness” tale. However, this trope is subverted by a number of odd characters and odder situations – including the realization that the narrator has seriously misunderstood her own circumstances throughout the story.

Additionally, none of this is told in chronological order. We first meet Del at the moment her life has fallen into complete disarray: she is maimed, shivering, and naked on a rock trying to explain what has happened to a group of sea lions (the quake has, for reasons that are never explained, caused the emergence of both animal and human telepathy). Later, she tells more to a bereaved fisherman named Cheng. Other characters, including Del’s parents, her religious zealot neighbors, and some nearby preppers fill in more of the blanks and the story zips back and forth between past and present. 

Many narrative threads are either left open or never adequately explained. These gaps could make the book feel unsatisfying for some readers, but overall the gaps feel right: they match Del’s chaotic cognition. All of the action takes place in a confined geographical area, and we assume that the rest of the world is doing fine while the Pacific Northwest is having a bad time of it. However, we never find out any details. In this sense the book bears much resemblance to a post-apocalyptic novel even though it is not (quite) the apocalypse.

While we hope for the best for Del, the mood remains somber throughout; she is both deeply flawed and living under a bad star. Especially during Del’s school days, the author provides a moving description of what it means to be a child in thrall to a future made uncertain by climate change and the violence of the earth itself. A short scene of preppers trying to one-up each other ought to be comic, but feels pathetic in the context of the futility of their efforts. Del’s repeated self-sabotage is met with justified impatience by those around her. The animals’ voices are convincingly portrayed, whether they are horses, cats, or seals, and they are just as blunt as the humans.

Overall, the tension between the pervasive sorrow and Del’s tenacity makes for gripping reading. Will Del survive to find her missing son and husband? And if so, will this bring any happiness or comfort? Will she reconcile with her other children? Will she be again subject to violence or will she find romance with Cheng? 

In the end, the author’s message is clear: while it is their lives that entrance the reader, these people are entirely at the mercy of Nature, specifically the Juan de Fuca plate and the vastness of the ecosphere that encompasses us. 

Ladder to Heaven
Katie Welch
October 14, 2025, Wolsak & Wynn, 350pp

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