In the future, America descends into civil war after climate change and other disasters lead the national government to try to ban fossil fuels. Sarat, a refugee girl, becomes a terrorist after a massacre at her refugee camp, recruited by a man funded by a foreign empire that wants the civil war to keep going. American War brilliantly captures what a second Civil War could look like if the south rose again at the end of the twenty-first century. The novel is the story of one woman, whose actions shape America's history in the future. Tomboy Sarat Sara T. and her family live in Louisiana, one of the border states to the Red Southern zone of the US. The Free Southern States are a group of only 4 states that are defying the order to not use fossil fuels. This will lead to the Second American Civil War.
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Content warnings include themes of torture, violence, trauma, war, and death, as well as references to refugee camps and radicalization.
From The Publisher:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle-this gripping debut novel asks what might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons upon itself. From the author of What Strange Paradise
"Powerful … as haunting a postapocalyptic universe as Cormac McCarthy [created] in The Road." -The New York Times
Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, and that unmanned drones fill the sky. When her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she begins to grow up shaped by her particular time and place. But not everyone at Camp Patience is who they claim to be. Eventually Sarat is befriended by a mysterious functionary, under whose influence she is turned into a deadly instrument of war. 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.
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American War?
About the Author:
OMAR EL AKKAD is an author and a journalist. He has reported from Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, and many other locations around the world. His work earned Canada's National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young…
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