BookBrowse Reviews Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell

When life changes in an instant, what happens next? More specifically, as Cebo Campbell asks in his debut novel Sky Full of Elephants, when white people of every age and every geographic location, on the same day and at the same time, walk into the nearest body of water and drown, what are we left with? And what exactly are the consequences when half the population is erased? Campbell attempts to answer these stirring questions in a mesmerizing story about loss, gain, and identity.

The focus of the novel is Charlie Brunton, a solar and electrical power professor at Howard University navigating a variety of emotions after "the event." While Charlie is relieved whites are gone, without them, systems have collapsed. Banks are shuttered, the subways are half-filled, paychecks are cash-only. Television is a hybrid form of what it once was. Gas stations have folded. Charlie feels pressure ...