The Bottom Line: A gripping eco-thriller about a visionary who risks everything to help solve the climate crisis.
How to Surf a Hurricane opens in Pittsburgh as Moro Petroff, an idealistic engineer and scion of a powerful energy dynasty, finds himself locked in a tense confrontation with his domineering uncle Dmitri. Dmitri, who serves as both the personal and ideological foil for Moro, is the CEO of Petroff Power, the family-owned energy conglomerate that has built its fortune on fossil fuels. Moro’s ambitious battery project – a lithium-sulfur battery that he believes will be a shining example of sustainable power, but is a year behind schedule – is unceremoniously axed. The crushing news comes as Moro’s project is about to ship a new prototype.
Moro is forced to make an impossible choice: accept defeat or risk everything to make the project work without his uncle’s funding. The quick-thinking engineer doesn’t take long to come up with a plan. What if he secretly intercepted the batteries in transit, sold them to the highest bidder, and let the market judge the value of what his uncle dismisses as a “little experiment”?
What ensues is a globetrotting eco-heist that takes the story to Alaska, France, the Caribbean, Baja California and elsewhere. These locations aren’t just exotic backdrops – they’re carefully chosen locations that reflect different facets of the climate crisis: corporate denial, environmental displacement, frontier innovation, and grassroots resistance.
As Moro attempts to reclaim his future, he assembles an appealing crew of innovative collaborators: Miki, a grizzled oil-rig veteran haunted by tragedy; Victoria, a mother and hurricane surfer; Patty, a sewage-pump engineer; and Anne, a seasoned French salt farmer fighting to preserve her ancestral marshland. Author Todd Medema uses Moro’s interactions with each of them to explore concepts such as deliberate corporate sabotage and geoengineered storms. Medema’s story envisions a scrappy, diverse, and determined future where people fight not just to survive climate change—but to adapt, resist, and build something better. It’s a rare blend of swagger and ingenuity, wrapped in the pressing urgency of the environmental crisis. We predict readers will find themselves Googling some of the fascinating concepts in the story.
Like his protagonist, Medema is a product builder who has worked with companies on the forefront of technology including Palantir, Tesla and Uber. Accordingly, he writes with both the authority and directness of an engineer. There’s very little fat in How to Surf a Hurricane; the problem and primary solution are both identified up front, and Medema’s prose is both vivid and highly economical. Passages in time are explained in short, fable-like paragraphs, and the dialogue crackles with wit and urgency throughout. The result is a highly addictive tale that can be completed on a coast-to-coast flight. For those who are hungry for hope, action, and innovation in the face of climate catastrophe, Medema’s debut is a gust of fresh air.
