Flood
A Memoir
“FLOOD is a magical incantation with chiseled prose that cuts to the bone—bright, sharp, and thirst-quenching; I couldn’t get enough. Kalafus delivers a memoir of motherhood, medicine, and making it work by any means necessary—showing us that even when the waters rise, the flood itself may carry us forward.” —Adrian Shirk: author of And Your Daughters Shall Prophesy, an NPR Best Book “FLOOD is a brave book and a necessary one.” —Michael Klein: Lambda Award Author of When I was a Twin Christine is pregnant with twins and reeling from her husband’s affair when her right breast engages in a mutiny. Delivering identical boys and a tumor on the same day, she believes the worst is over. Until the natural spring under her house — what the neighborhood kids call The Witch House — begins to rise. Desperate for solid ground, Christine’s desire for wisdom sweeps everything in its path—her parents’ memories of the historic flood of 1955 that devastated Connecticut’s upper and lower Housatonic River Valley, the impossible expectations of modern motherhood, and a chilling brush with medical gaslighting —reminding us that when the stakes include certain death, they cannot get any higher.
Lauded by Publisher's Weekly as "reassuringly honest and entertaining," Christine's award-winning writing has appeared in The Culture We Deserve, Longreads, The New Guard, and The Connecticut Literary Anthology, among many other places. "I've Heard You Make Cakes," recorded before a live audience at Laugh Boston, was broadcast by The Moth Radio Hour on New York's WNYC. Christine lives in Pomfret, Connecticut with her husband and Virginia Woof— their Springer spaniel— in an old farmhouse that needs her.
