When Amanda Leduc started working on her wild, spellbinding novel “The Centaur’s Wife” several years ago, she thought she was writing about desire. What she got was a book about desire, sure, but one that pushed boundaries, incorporating fairy tales featuring disabled characters, groundbreaking accessibility and a mainstream publisher.

It’s a book that looks at the fairy tale tradition, rips it apart and audaciously reassembles it. Yet even though it enters the realm of the mysterious and inexplicable, it is anchored to a persuasive naturalism In chronicling the drama of a small group of people fighting for survival in the wake of planetary disaster.