The One-Way Rain

A timely literary dystopia about corporate rule, racial justice, and the importance of a really good cup of coffee.It's 2023. The government caused 9/11 in order to throw the country into a panic, then passed a series of apartheid-like laws to segregate people of color from whites. Now most black and brown people live in an occupied territory called SAPID (Special Assistance Perimeter Interim District) where the only available work is in vast sweatshops, making products for rich white consumers; while those consumers live out material lives in cities where brands are worshiped and even food is covered in advertisements. Sterling Teacher is a white bureaucrat who doesn't care about politics but absolutely hates advertising. Over the years she has taught herself the ninja-like skills needed to sabotage ad agencies by night. Lore Henry is a black woman, the daughter of resistance leaders murdered by the authorities. At the age of 22 she has already survived imprisonment and torture, and nothing will deter her from the fight for justice. Lore and Sterling have exactly one thing in common: a nagging curiosity about the dark-skinned, haunted-looking child at the center of a new ad campaign.The One-Way Rain is a novel about race and revolution set in an America not too different from our own. It's also a sharp-witted meditation on friendship, on unexpected moments of joy, on what turns a regular person into a hero and what happens next.