Tackling the large and small issues of the day through a series of notebook entries and letters, Hope for the Worst, Kate Brandt’s lyrical debut novel, offers many finely cut gems while showing how a young woman develops from a passive observer to a full participant in her own life.

An idealistic and naïve young woman, Ellie Adkins is also a keen observer of the world around her. Brandt renders Ellie’s observations in sentences that shine like diamond chips: “But in The City, dawn is not rosy-fingered,” Ellie notes. Elsewhere, she observes “the steeple of the church like a black needle in the sky” and  marvels at the way “orange light sprays the hoods of cars like a kind of gelatin.” 

An inveterate writer, Ellie fills several notebooks with her struggle to heal various wounds stemming from her parents’ divorce and her own failed romantic relationships. Entries in her Red Notebook are addressed to Calvin, a deceptive and predatory Buddhist instructor who had attempted to shape and control her; entries in her Blue Notebook are addressed to herself as a way of “writing myself into existence.” She fills the notebooks with astute observations of her everyday life as a way to heal.

Ellie is most comfortable writing in her notebooks. When people at her job, where she types labels for a non-profit, challenge or upset her, she responds in her notebooks instead of directly to them. But she also asks big questions in those pages: Who are we? Why do we suffer? What is suffering? How do we live? 

Her ruminations seed the novel’s trajectory. On a quest for a happiness that she believes comes from the happiness of others, she teeters reactively between joy and despair. Because of her passivity, her desire to please others, Ellie has lost herself. This lost Ellie finds herself on a wild journey that begins in New York City and takes her to Nepal, Tibet, and elsewhere.

As with all journeys, especially wild ones, Ellie’s travels force her onto a path of internal growth. Her desire to please others transforms into a quest to save herself—physically, emotionally, spiritually. After being in Kathmandu for a few days, she learns that her original mission to climb Mt. Everest—something she never really wanted to do—is compromised by the lack of equipment; when she withdraws from the climb, a friend lauds her “voluntary sacrifice.” “Cass’s face is stricken with admiration,” she reports. “I didn’t feel anything. What difference does it make?”

When Cass later thanks her for her great sacrifice, readers know Ellie’s goals never really included climbing a mountain. But Ellie has another reason to skip the Everest summit: to fulfill Calvin’s desire for her to retrieve something specific from the rubble of a ruined monastery in Tibet. Even at this late point, Calvin’s happiness may still be her own. This twist thrusts Ellie onto the last leg of the journey, to Tibet, where she has another chance for growth. 

Brandt’s prose is marvelous, studded with precise and lyrical observations. Brandt uses light as a metaphor to show how Ellie emerges from a benighted lack of awareness of herself, especially her own passivity, into the light of her own power.  In the Blue Notebook, she writes: “It has been four hours. I am not asleep. I get up, stalk through the apartment. Orange light stripes my naked body.”  In the Red Notebook, she writes: “In July, it stayed light till about nine at night, but the coffee shop’s plate-glass window was turned east, so the light came from banks of fluorescent lights hanging from the fake tin ceiling.” 

As Ellie endures painful awakenings and suffers debilitating setbacks, she acts with bravery and determination. As she comes to know herself, she learns that happiness and wisdom may be dovetailed. Through her, readers share in Ellie’s learning and her discovery of hints of answers to the big questions. With this novel Brandt offers a twist on the old adage of hoping for the best but being prepared for the worst. Ellie hopes for the worst and yearns for the best; she hopes for the worst and is surprised by the best. Perhaps her most transformative discovery sparkles in the book’s last line: “The world is created anew every minute.”

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Kate Brandt is a writer, adult literacy teacher, traveler, and student of Buddhism. She is a graduate of the MFA Writing program at Sarah Lawrence College, and her work has appeared in literary anthologies and a number of publications, including Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Literary Mama, and Redivider. Hope for the Worst is her first novel. 

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Rosalia Scalia is the author of two story collections, Stumbling Toward Grace, published in 2021 by Unsolicited Press, and Under the Radar, forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in January 2025. She holds an MA in writing from Johns Hopkins University and is a Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artist’s Award recipient. She lives with her family in Baltimore City. Find her online at:  http://www.rosaliascalia.com.