The year is 2023 and global climate change has led to massive drought. Dry tells the story of Signy and Tomas Nilsson, a brother and sister farming their great-grandmother’s land, and Magnus Dragland, who owns the surrounding 100 miles.

Mixing Norse mythology and a love triangle involving Signy’s great-grandparents, Dry could have been an interesting and thrilling family saga, but Sapergia never quite settles on which story she is telling. Setting the book 18 years in the future works well for the farming side of the story. The drought has had a global impact; many of the world’s greatest rivers are said to be flowing at 15% of their former capacity, and cities like Regina are mainly deserted. But it is unclear where most of the people have gone. The migration is not vital to the story but it is one of many instances where more information would have been appreciated.

The science, however, becomes problematic because of the near-future setting. Dragland is 120 years old but, other than suffering from brittle bones, is in good physical and mental shape for the better part of the book. If the book were set farther into the future, this wouldn’t be such an issue, but it is harder to suspend disbelief for a character who is already 100 in today’s world.

Dry moves from speculative fiction to full sci-fi when Signy’s young son David, who has been deaf from birth yet hears the songs of the prairie grass, stops a tractor that is about to hit him using previously unknown psionic powers. While this surprises Signy and the other adults, no one seems overly concerned, and David’s powers over machinery are more or less forgotten until near the end of the book.

There is a good story here; unfortunately, it is tangled up in the roots of what is either a much longer tale or a few separate ones.