Personal and planetary uncertainty is something that journalist Elizabeth Rush grapples with in her decision to become a mother. Climate modeling is imprecise, and there is no model for parenting, though “we must act with both our children and more than our children in mind.” So, in 2019, Rush joins fifty-seven scientists and crew aboard a research vessel bound for Thwaites Glacier. The surrounding ice has loosened, and researchers can get close for the first time. “Were it to wholly disintegrate, [Thwaites] could destabilize the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet, causing global sea levels to jump ten feet or more.” It has been dubbed the “doomsday glacier.”

Without glorifying community or motherhood, Elizabeth Rush’s The Quickening brings these things into the conversation on climate change.