Mudlark A Novel

By: Mary Helen Specht

Published by Random House, 2026-07-21

A dazzling dystopian novel about the fall of a troubled rockstar, her long-lost solo album, and her daughter's epic search for redemption in the ruins of New York City.

"Combines the spellbinding worldbuilding of Station Eleven with a rock-and-roll heart . . . A luscious, awe-inspiring, and gorgeously written novel about love and how it will save us, no matter what the future holds."—Amanda Eyre Ward

Jenny Sweet's marriage is ending—and with it her band and maybe even her fragile relationship with her thirteen-year-old daughter, Neko. A reluctant wife and mother, Jenny plans a new journey of self-discovery after one more gig at Burning Man. But when Neko disappears amid the chaos of the festival, Jenny fears that everything that mattered to her has been lost. As she races against the dark, Jenny finds herself thrown into the past, and into the heart of a gathering storm.

Now twenty-five, Neko is a mudlark: a trained recruit who braves the rival factions and feral survivalists in the ruins of a crumbling, flooded Manhattan for resources that grow scarcer by the day. When she stumbles upon the master of her mother’s long-lost solo album and later hears that someone else is searching for it—someone who could be her mother, missing for over a decade—she embarks on a perilous adventure with a ragtag crew that will take her from treetop societies to decadent raves to the underground bunker where she will, finally, confront her mother's fate—and her own.

A profound tale of resilience set in a future wracked by calamity and buoyed by hope, Mudlark is an unforgettable novel that explores how love and art persist as beacons of humanity.