Inspired by her mother's own experience with Katrina and its aftermath, Sherri L. Smith (Flygirl) offers dystopian realism in Orleans.
By 2025, after the storms, the fever and the quarantine, the "Delta States" have been cut off from all other society. Vestiges of the modern world still exist, but a new society has emerged as well--a primitive, violent place where blood tribes mean more than family.
Twenty years later, Fen de la Guerre aligns herself with a blood tribe. After an ambush, Fen is left with the newborn of the tribe's former leader. Fen knows that the infant's only chance of survival is for them somehow to breach the wall to the Outer States before the plague can enter the child's blood stream; they have only two weeks. Fen is helped by Daniel, a scientist from the Outer States who has entered the delta to find a cure for the disease. Daniel is protected by a bio-suit and stocked with some food, but without Fen to guide him, he'll never survive. They make a deal: Fen will help him in exchange for taking the baby to the Outer States for a chance at a normal life.
The book brims with adrenaline-pumping action, high-stakes escapes and depictions of a faded city cut off from civilization and eroding from within. The author's details take us into a chilling world that we recognize as one possible future. --Nan Shipley, literary scout for the film industry