Elizabeth Fama's (Monstrous Beauty) latest book starts strong and never lets up. She sets her dystopian tale in the modern-day United States, but imagines a world divided after the 1918 flu pandemic into those who live by day (Rays), and those who live by night (Smudges). Rays run the world, and Smudges are mostly relegated to factory jobs or worse.
Sixteen-year-old narrator Sol, a Smudge who's spent her life in school and a factory, decides she's going to kidnap her newborn niece (a Ray), so Sol's ill father can see his grandchild once before he dies. Sol's brother, a technical wiz (and father of the newborn), was transferred to the Rays because he was useful to the government. She hasn't seen him since. Her plan is simple: at the factory, she'll mutilate her hand enough to be sent to the hospital, where she'll steal the baby. She's treated by a Ray medical assistant, D'Arcy, and things quickly go wrong.
Sol's sense of wonder as she discovers the outside world during the daytime coincides with her growing feelings for D'Arcy. The love story starts slowly and builds to a satisfying resolution with two people bound to each other before they even knew it. Fama does an excellent job of creating a world rooted in the now, but also convincingly alternative. Like the best of dystopian fiction, the author asks readers to look at society from a slight remove and draw inevitable conclusions about the world we live in. --Nan Shipley, literary scout