The Year the Sea Came Inland

by redthread

Yadira Cedeño Mendoza, 25 · Calceta, Bolívar Canton, Manabí Province, Ecuador

Yadira Cedeño, a 25-year-old hydrometeorologist in Calceta, Ecuador, runs a network of homemade rain sensors meant to warn her flood-prone Manabí town before the rivers rise. As a Super El Niño larger than the catastrophic 1998 storm bears down on the coast, she must outrun a corrupt regional engineer who stole the levee money, convince her traumatized fisherman father to face the rain again, and prove that a girl with a soldering iron and a WhatsApp group can save more lives than a government that forgot her town existed.