Awake in the floating city : a novel
(Book)

"Bo knows she should leave. Almost everyone else has fled San Francisco as years of rain drowned it. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. Grief-stricken, an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. She half-heartedly allows her cousin to plan for her escape, but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay. Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a relationship deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought she'd abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to swirl together with Bo's own, she's struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Then Mia's health turns and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who's brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever"-- Provided by publisher.