The Wall
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- €2.99
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- €2.99
Publisher Description
When a mutated HIV virus causes a global epidemic, one city in the American Southwest builds a wall that divides the city into two zones, separating the infected from the uninfected. As the epidemic continues to spread, unrest grows in the South Zone, where the infected are quarantined. Now in the scorching heat of summer, their power has gone off, and it can only be a matter of time until the wall fails to hold back the coming firestorm of violence. When that happens, will any place be safe?
25-year-old Sarah, who has sought refuge in the city after losing her family, lives in the North Zone and teaches children orphaned by the epidemic. To shield herself from more hurt, she distances herself emotionally from others, but she can’t turn her back on everyone. Someone has to help the elderly woman who lives down the hall. And then there is the orphan Indian girl in her class who will be sent to a reservation to die unless she can prevent it. And how can she say no to Martin, the young hospital orderly from the South Zone who shows up at her high-rise with a bullet wound and a dangerous request?
As the crisis escalates, Sarah must overcome her past trauma and join forces with friends and strangers to save the people she cares about. She must decide who she can trust and what risks she is willing to take, including the risk of letting herself love again.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This flawed tale is set in an interesting but incompletely drawn near future of a viral epidemic, draconian laws, and massive social unrest. Sarah Davis, a young teacher, lives a quiet life as one of the lucky few uninfected people in an unnamed Southwestern city. A high wall separates her and the other healthy people from the lawless hordes of violent, desperate infected people. Her own inner walls, which keep her distant from others in the city, begin to shatter as she becomes attached to several people caught in melodramatic problems: her young teaching assistant, an orphan girl in her class, her elderly neighbor, and an attractive hospital orderly named Martin. When Martin convinces her to smuggle needed drugs to his brother on the other side of the wall, Sarah learns how close total chaos is. Faced with impending danger, Sarah must decide who she can and cannot save. Madden (Gaslight and Fog) excels at capturing the new normal and Sarah's attempts to balance her own concerns with care for others. However, once the action picks up, the writing becomes more hurried and less rich, and the pat and abrupt ending leaves too many unresolved questions. Despite these flaws, this is a chilling portrayal of love and concern in a world on the brink of apocalypse. (BookLife)
