What, Exactly, Will Happen to Portland When the Big One Hits?
Emma Pattee’s debut novel, Tilt, is set in a present-day Portland struck by the looming catastrophic earthquake.
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Anyone who lives in the Cascadia Subduction Zone has at least a vague sense of what they might do if/when/should the Big One hit. The looming threat is probably the only reason you know what the Cascadia Subduction Zone is. Preparedness means a vague, intermittent worry; a “go bag”; an elaborate bunker and a store of food; or, you know, living somewhere else. Yet, no matter how well- or ill-prepared you are, nobody has much control over where they will be the moment that Juan de Fuca plate (you knew that name, too, huh?) shifts. You could, for example, be alone, nine months pregnant, and shopping for a crib at Ikea. That’s where Annie finds herself at the start of Portlander Emma Pattee’s debut novel, Tilt, which Pattee will read from at Powell’s City of Books Monday (7pm, March 31).
Pattee, who lives in Portland, will read at Powell’s City of Books Monday, March 31.
Pattee is a journalist who writes for places like The Atlantic and The New York Times, primarily about climate issues. This novel isn’t necessarily concerned with climate change. And though it makes a handful of general jabs at Portland’s lack of seismically sound buildings, it’s most interested in generating empathy for victims of natural disasters. Annie is not an expert in much of anything; instead, she represents what facing a natural disaster looks like for, well, a very normal lady. A playwright turned secretary, Annie is contemplating what could have been—in her and her actor/barista husband’s lives—as the promise of her first child simultaneously brings a light into her life and forecloses the faint trace of a lingering dream. More interesting is that she’s ruminating on this life change while traversing a Portland whose bridges have fallen into the Willamette, whose stores have been looted, and whose brick buildings have strangled everything and everyone inside of them. Her water could break at any moment and she’s desperately trying to find her husband, who was on the opposite end of town when the earthquake hit.
Tilt moves quickly and takes place over a single day. If you’re looking for a guide to navigating Portland during a catastrophic earthquake, this isn’t your book. It seems to argue that one can only be so prepared for such things. In it are glimpses of the streets you see every day warped into hellish skateparks and the friendly neighborhood health food store where you buy the good produce overrun by distraught looters. Pattee recently told OPB the idea came to her in 2019, while she was shopping for a crib at Ikea and what turned out to be a small earthquake threatened to upend her world: The Big One flashed, if only for a moment, as a reality.
More Things to Do This Week
music Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: In Concert
8pm Mar 27 | Revolution Hall, $45–145+
What if you crossed the Muppets with Star Wars and cast David Bowie as a crooning goblin king with a tantalizing mullet named Jareth? You would have Labyrinth, babe, the mishmashed zenith of the ’80s. There is no singalong portion explicitly advertised in this nationally traveling tour of screenings supported by a live band, but I refuse to imagine a world in which a theater full of people sit quietly through “Magic Dance.”
Dancers Andrea Parson and William Couture in NW Dance Project artistic director Sarah Slipper’s Hedda.
DANCE Hedda
7:30pm Fri & Sat, Mar 28 & 29 | Newmark Theatre, $29–68
Premiered in 2018, Hedda is Northwest Dance Project founder and artistic director Sarah Slipper’s narrative work about a loveless new marriage between academics that quickly unravels as the title character’s past lover resurfaces. The full-company production is based on nineteenth-century Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s drama Hedda Gabler, a landmark example of realism.
BOOKS Leah Sottile
7pm Thu, Mar 27 | Powell’s City of Books, FREE
Sottile, the Portland journalist behind true crime hits like When the Moon Turns to Blood and the podcast Bundyville, takes on the “pastel-colored world of love, light, and enlightenment” of new age wellness in her latest book, Blazing Eye Sees All. Sottile follows cult leader Amy Carlson (of Love Has Won, chronicled in a 2023 HBO doc) to trace the current vogue of new age spirituality far past the casual tarot and crystal hobby to assert that, Publishers Weekly writes, “cults are a feature, not a bug, of American spiritual life, functioning as an outlet for repressed women enmeshed in patriarchal belief structures.”
What We’re Reading About Elsewhere
- Checking in with Portland muralist Nia Musiba. (Variable West)
- How Trump and senior advisor to the president Elon Musk’s attempts to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services will affect Oregonians. (Oregon ArtsWatch)
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