This story is Sarat’s, narrated by a nephew, which takes place 70-80 years into the future, in what remains of the United States.
America is suffering the catastrophic results of global warming. Florida has disappeared underwater, Louisiana is following, the great arid plains of the southern land are no longer fit for agriculture. All the same, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina have refused to stop using fossil fuels, instead seceding the union and inciting the battle that’s tearing the country apart.

Sarat is born in a purple state - neither belonging to what's left of the Union or the rebellion. Boyish and brutalized, her gradual transformation is from a headstrong young woman to something extremely fearful. El Akkad has done nothing less than reveal how a curious little girl evolves into a pitiless fighter.

Her change appears subtle month to month, but devastating by the end. The decisions that she makes will have tremendous consequences not just for Sarat but for her family and her country, rippling through generations of strangers and kin alike.

“Rage wrapped itself around her like a tourniquet,” Akkad writes, “keeping her alive even as it condemned a part of her to atrophy.”

This book is not about war - but it’s about ruin.
We’re left to see what happens when someone is subjected to a lifetime of war, loss and suffering.