It’s as if the stars are aligned in the shape of a Woolly Mammoth. Noted author Ramona Ausubel’s fourth book, The Last Animal, was released a few months ago to critical acclaim (see below). Based on real science that is going on right now, the fictional story follows a female scientist and her two daughters to the ends of the earth to find a woolly mammoth in the hopes of resurrecting the species and saving the planet. Ramona is so excited to be part of the NHSM Mammoth Project. She will join us on Zoom on December 11 when we convene to discuss the book. Get your copy today and start reading. Participation is free, but we ask that you please RSVP.
SYNOPSIS: Teenage sisters Eve and Vera never imagined their summer vacation would be spent in the Arctic, tagging along on their mother’s scientific expedition. But there’s a lot about their lives lately that hasn’t been going as planned, and truth be told, their single mother might not be so happy either.
Now in Siberia with a bunch of serious biologists, Eve and Vera are just bored enough to cause trouble. Fooling around in the permafrost, they accidentally discover a perfectly preserved, four-thousand-year-old baby mammoth, and things finally start to get interesting. The discovery sets off a surprising chain of events, leading mother and daughters to go rogue, pinging from the slopes of Siberia to the shores of Iceland to an exotic animal farm in Italy, and resulting in the birth of a creature that could change the world—or at least this family.
The Last Animal takes readers on a wild, entertaining, and refreshingly different kind of journey, one that explores the possibilities and perils of the human imagination on a changing planet, what it’s like to be a woman in a field dominated by men, and how a wondrous discovery can best be enjoyed with family. Even teenagers.
Praise for The Last Animal: “I know it’s hard to imagine, but The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel is like a sweeter, more poignant version of Jurassic Park…. This shaggy elephant story is as much about surviving family grief as it is about living in a world doomed by climate change. And yet, The Last Animal takes flight with all the improbable buoyancy of a pterodactyl.” — Ron Charles, CBS This Morning
“The Ice Age meets the Anthropocene in this gem from Ausubel…. Ausubel is at her best when exploring the ties that bind, especially in a family flung into unprecedented circumstances. In charting the parallel worlds of grief, scientific devotion, and adolescence, Ausubel comes up with a seamless global caper that brims with compassion and makes the reader glad to be alive.” — Publishers Weekly, STARRED review
“An incredibly sharp and sweeping novel about our modern planet with an intimate emotional core…. Balancing the breadth and complexity of our ailing ecosystems and the resonant humanity of a grieving family, Ausubel has crafted an unforgettable tale for our time.” — Chicago Review of Books
“Every family, after all, goes extinct eventually. The paradox that this novel confronts with such tender sympathy and humor is how to love the time we have left.” — The Washington Post
Ramona Ausubel is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of the novel No One Is Here Except All of Us and the short story collection A Guide to Being Born. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, One Story, The Paris Review Daily, Best American Fantasy, and elsewhere and has received special mentions in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She has been longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and was a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Award and the Pushcart Prize.
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