A Friend of the Earth

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the award–winning author of The Tortilla Curtain comes an “entertaining and informative” (Chicago Tribune) novel about global warming and ecological collapse. “Funny and touching, antic and affecting . . . while Boyle’s humor is as black as ever, he demonstrates that satire can coexist with psychological realism, comedy with compassion.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times It is the year 2025. Global warming is a reality. The biosphere has collapsed, and most mammals—not to mention fish, birds, and frogs—are extinct. Tyrone Tierwater is eking out a bleak living in southern California, managing a pop star’s private menagerie that “only a mother could love”—scruffy hyenas, jackals, warthogs, and three down-at-the-mouth lions. It wasn’t always like this for Ty. Once he was a passionate environmentalist, so committed to saving the earth that he became an eco-terrorist and, ultimately, a convicted felon. As a member of the radical group Earth Forever!, he unwittingly endangered both his daughter, Sierra, and his wife, Andrea. Now, just when he’s trying to survive in a world torn by obdurate storms and winnowing drought, Andrea comes back into his life. Blending idealism and satire, A Friend of the Earth addresses the ultimate questions of human love and the survival of the species.