All City

April 22, 2019
In this warm and lovely novel set in a near-future New York battered by climate change and gentrification, DiFrancesco
(Psychopomps) braids together art, power, crisis, and community organizing. After Superstorm Bernice floods New York, convenience-store clerk Makayla, bike courier Jaden, and the silent, traumatized Alejandro take over an abandoned luxury condo. With their neighbors, including genderqueer activist Jesse, they carve out a secret community of survivors that’s built on mutual care and support. But when a mysterious muralist’s paintings draw the building’s landlord, and the police, back to take what Makayla and friends have built, they must choose whether to fade back into the shelters or stay and fight. DiFrancesco’s crystalline eye for detail—a coin’s glitter in block party debris, rooftops like floating Lego bricks—paints Brooklyn as a wide universe filled with a gut-deep sense of community. Hampered only by an abrupt ending, this loving, grieving warning thoughtfully traces the resilience, fragility, and joy of precarious communities in an immediate, compassionate voice.