Two Degrees by Alan Gratz

Two Degrees

By Alan Gratz

Scholastic Press 2022

At one point in Alan Gratz’s terrific new novel Two Degrees, some of his characters bring up that woolly old concept, six degrees of separation, the idea that every person on the planet is connected to every other person by no more than six other people. Parlor games and great stage plays notwithstanding, the idea has always been hogwash, never more so than in a world of nearly 10 billion people. But even so, it has an added resonance in this book, since the title of Two Degrees refers not only to the interconnectedness of everybody in the world but also to the crucial threshold of the climate emergency currently engulfing the planet: if Earth warms two more degrees, the greenhouse effect will become irreversible and on track to accelerate. 

It’s the backdrop for Gratz’s novel, the undercurrent of lurking tension that connects his three separate plot lines involving young people (Two Degrees continues Scholastic’s century-long unbroken tradition of books that respect the intelligence of their young readers). In Churchill, Alaska, Owen Mackenzie and George Gruyére are accustomed to the influx of seasonal tourists looking to see some of the polar bears that are drawn to the outskirts of town when the sea ice retreats and they can’t hunt seals. One of those distressed, hungry bears sets its sights on the two boys. In northern California, Akira Christiansen is riding her horse Dodger in the forest where she goes to replenish her energies (Akira is adorably introverted; even when portraying disasters, Gratz never forgets to make his characters human) when they’re caught in a raging fire. And in Miami, Natalie Torres is one of the millions of people in Dade County watching as Hurricane Reuben threatens to become “the Big One,” the first Category 5 storm to strike Miami directly in modern times. 

Considering the unknown future into which these (and all other) young people are headed, it’s a telling decision on Gratz’s part to stress that all of his young protagonists are at some point simply reacting, fleeing blindly, totally out of control. Akira and Dodger have no choice but to run right through the flames:

Dodger thundered through the flames at full gallop. Akira had no idea where they were going, and she doubted Dodger did either. Every inch of her radiated with burning heat, and her clothes felt like hot irons against her skin.

With a hungry mother bear in pursuit, Owen has no idea where to escape:

He heard the thumping crunch of Momma Bear’s paws in the snow as she loped after him. Th-thump, th-thump, th-thump. Owen’s breath blew out in great white clouds, fogging his snow goggles. He couldn’t see, didn’t know where he was running. All he knew was that he couldn’t stop.

When the hurricane hits, Natalie is hurled into a directionless vortex:

The swirling storm surge pulled her under with the stove, and Natalie had to let go of [her dog] so she wouldn’t take him with her. She kicked and fought, turning upside down and round and round in the water until she didn’t know which way was up.

The pacing is finely controlled; the characters are wonderfully realized; the science (there’s a refreshing abundance of it) is smartly presented; Gratz is a practiced bestselling author, and it very much shows. This is precisely the way to dramatize the crisis facing us all

It’s encumbent on an author in Gratz’s position, ethically and probably contractually, to end on some kind of hopeful note, and given the realities in the daily news, this note is the only false one sounded in an otherwise entirely frank book. Throughout his narrative, Gratz consistently and gracefully avoids any hint of preaching or finger-pointing; human activity is hugely accelerating climate change, and the novel has almost no time for the nonsense of debating that flat fact. 

But when he appends an Author’s Note that ends with, “It's your world. Your future. It's up to you to decide what you want that future world to look like, and what you can do to make it happen,” he’s being overly-optimistic, to put it mildly. The responsibility for the catastrophes that threaten Akira, Natalie, George, and Owen rests squarely with the adults of the late 1990s and early 21st century, and it was in the early 21st century that the window to prevent further catastrophes – that two-degree window – permanently closed. Gratz’s heroes and their real-world counterparts can’t change that; their focus will be on mitigation and adaptation, not prevention. That’s a less cheering reality, but we can hope that future generation is as tough and resourceful as the young people in Two Degrees. 

Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Washington Post, The American Conservative, The Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, The National, and the Daily Star. He writes regularly for The Boston Globe, the Vineyard Gazette, and the Christian Science Monitor.