The Art Thieves: List 5

by Andrea L. Rogers
In a climate-ravaged future, Cherokee teen Stevie Henry must decide whether to trust a mysterious boy claiming to be a time traveler sent to steal and protect priceless artwork before an impending apocalypse destroys it.

This list covers vocabulary from "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)"–"Remember Me."

Here are links to our lists for the book: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4, List 5
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. imbue
    spread or diffuse through
    Like holy spaces, museums can be beautiful and clean, the objects they are decorated with imbued with meaning, chosen, the best of the world.
  2. surreptitiously
    in a secretive manner
    They had turned and gone back down the steps. I froze. Watched surreptitiously.
  3. diaspora
    the dispersion of something that was originally localized
    “Everyone who can leave the city is. Jane and I are going too. We have to get to my mom in Kansas City, then get us all back to Oklahoma.” Classic Indian Relocation Cherokee diaspora.
  4. unwieldy
    difficult to use or handle because of size or weight
    There was a large work shed in the garage where plywood was stored. It was splintery and unwieldy.
  5. bungle
    make a mess of, destroy, or ruin
    So, it’s not really God in the Western sense or Greek or Norse, but a recognition that none of this is ours, we didn’t create anything so much as riff on what we were given. And we really seemed to be bungling that one.
  6. inevitability
    the quality of being unavoidable
    Is this the anxiety our ancestors felt when our people were rounded up and marched away—that fear that in separation there was an inevitability of loss?
  7. tentative
    hesitant or lacking confidence; unsettled in mind or opinion
    Despite her vicious bark, there was a tentative knock on the door a few moments later.
  8. regimen
    a systematic plan for therapy
    “Want fenugreek?” I said, remembering my mother’s regimen to encourage an unsteady milk flow brought on by stress.
  9. surveil
    keep under close watch or observation
    We took turns listening to the radio, surveilling the abandoned block we had grown up on.
  10. unremitting
    uninterrupted in time and indefinitely long continuing
    Music was easier to agree on, once we found a genre we both liked. Nothing sad. Unremitting dancing and optimism was what the end of the world called for.
  11. perpetuate
    cause to continue or prevail
    It would be more like Europe in that way than ever before, but divided in a variety of ways, not necessarily by ethnic groups or religion; though some would self-segregate, perpetuate the divided world they were comfortable with, while others would choose to live in places they loved, with people they loved, and welcome the interruption of the hustle where money was the true God.
  12. waft
    blow gently
    The breeze wafted over them.
  13. jaunt
    a journey taken for pleasure
    I sideswiped an older woman when I turned out onto the highway on my way to shop at some thrift stores for books and clothes. A jaunt. A totally unnecessary trip.
  14. revelation
    the act of making something evident
    “Apocalypse” is such a strange word....But the Greek bits of the word mean “to uncover” and “to reveal,” as in “a revelation.”
  15. decimation
    the destruction or killing of a large part of the population
    What was this decimation of the human population going to reveal?
Created on Sun Sep 20 17:58:59 EDT 2026 (updated Tue Nov 03 14:41:18 EST 2026)

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