In The Art Thieves, Walter Award-winner and citizen of the Cherokee Nation Andrea L. Rogers (Man Made Monsters) returns with a stirring story about choosing to create a new future when disaster seems inevitable.
The world is ending; or at least, that's what it seems like to Stevie who, along with the rest of the planet, is experiencing "a cycle of drought and super-storms" during what she and her friends call "the denouement of the world." Stevie, a Cherokee teenager living in Texas, works at an art museum. She is earning money to go to college locally and stay near her loved ones: her parents and little brother Levi, who has "life-threatening allergies." At the museum, Stevie meets artist intern Adam, a Costa Rican woodcarver. Adam is enigmatic and, as the teens grow closer, he admits to her that he is from "seven generations in the future." He "was raised with one purpose," he says. "To make the future better."
Rogers's sophomore YA novel skillfully discusses the current affairs, pop culture, and climate-change related extreme weather events of the future and powerfully relates them to historical and contemporary legacies of racism and oppression. Rogers also illustrates how art and its legacy can speak truth to power and help build a better future. This provocative and insightful work of Cherokee futurism projects and imagines the kinds of decisions and personal sacrifices people might need to make to improve the world, and is an excellent choice for fans of Nnedi Okorafor or Octavia Butler. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer