DePauw Stories

Bob Weaver '93 senior director of communications

“THE ANTIDOTE” by Karen Russell

An abbreviated version of this appears in the fall 2026 issue of DePauw Magazine. 

Thanks to all who replied to my footnote question of “What are you reading?” It felt like we established an informal book group with new connections made and a few reconnections with old friends.* If this were a book club and it was my turn to pick, I'd pick “The Antidote” by Karen Russell. 

As in her 2011 bestseller “Swamplandia!” Russell layers the fictional and magical over real events and places. “The Antidote” is set in the fictional 1935 frontier town of Uz, Nebraska, in the months between two real disasters: the Black Sunday dust storm of April and the Republican River flood about two months later. Russell’s magical realism blends tragedy, violence, humor, kindness, witnesses and accomplices — humanity in full — in a series of first-person character sketches that comprise each chapter. 

The title character is Antonina Rossi, a “prairie witch” whose working name, The Antidote, borrows from a cure-all advertisement of the era. Fittingly, Rossi’s mentor says of the name, “I like it. Makes a big, dumb promise.” Prairie witches, sometimes referred to as “vaults,” take the big and small secrets of the frontier population as deposits, thus relieving their clients of the burden of carrying the memories with them. 

That’s a major theme in the novel — repressed memories of individuals, communities and our country. It’s deeply affecting and thought-provoking. That Russell uses witches, a sentient scarecrow, an enchanted camera and a feisty cat with a grudge to tell the story of these unique burdens makes it so weird, otherworldly and flat-out enjoyable. I hope you read it. 

Thanks again to those of you who reached out to let me know what you were reading, including Janet Graves Teegaurden ’64, who could not put down “The Woman They Could Not Silence” by Kate Moore. Do you have a recommendation for the next book? Let me know what you’re reading at bobweaver@depauw.edu.