Fragile: A Novel

By: Alexa Weik von Mossner

In 2057, New York is a divided metropolis. Sheltered by enormous seawalls, Manhattan is green, clean, and thriving, but Brooklyn and Queens have been given up to the storms and the rising Atlantic, their communities abandoned. The evacuation zones along the coast have become hotbeds for illegal meat farming ever since industrial animal agriculture was outlawed to save the last functional antibiotics and fight one more losing battle against the rapidly changing climate.

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Book Description

Jake Alvaro works a brutal job at Homeland Security because he is brilliant at securing critical medical drugs for Manhattan in a frantic global market running out of everything. Lately, though, he has grown terrified of his choices, whatever he does a death knell for hundreds or thousands, so he is looking to change the system from within. Surviving on pep pills and connected to work via the Spine, a digital interface implanted in his body, Jake cannot afford to care for anyone, least of all the headstrong woman at his local coffeeshop who is keeping secrets from him.

Shavir Tayard is a savvy barista who abides by the system during the day and fights for equal access to food and medical care as a member of Roots, a collective farm in Brooklyn whose members risk charges of ecoterrorism for their nocturnal animal liberation raids in the evacuation zone. The last thing Shavir needs in her life is a disillusioned Homeland Security guy, but when she takes Jake across the East River to the ravaged communities he was ordered to ignore, he discovers that the world may need something more urgent—and dangerous—than slow change.

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