The moving story of one family struggling to maintain their humanity in circumstances that threaten their every valuefrom the highly acclaimed, award-winning author of Thank You, Mr. Nixon. Intricately imagined … [It] grows directly out of the soil of our current political moment. The New York Times Book Review
The time: not so long from now. The place: AutoAmerica, a country surveilled by one Aunt Nettie, a Big Brother that is part artificial intelligence, part internet, and oddly humaneven funny. The people: divided. The angelfair Netted have jobs and, what with the country half under water, literally occupy the high ground. The Surplus live on swampland if theyre lucky, on water if theyre not.
The story: To a Surplus couplehe once a professor, she still a lawyeris born a girl, Gwen, with a golden arm. Her teens find her happily playing in an underground baseball league, but when AutoAmerica faces ChinRussia in the Olympics, Gwen finds herself in dangerous territory, playing ball with the Netted even as her mother battles this apartheid-like society in court.