Lijah

Secrets can be like a slow poison…killing young love before it has a chance to bloom.

What if the Gilded Age never ended? What if a twentieth century coup terminated the American experiment and replaced democracy with aristocratic rule? Welcome to New Anglia, a nation governed by a powerful Council that caters to the elite by stifling technology, curtailing individual liberty and exploiting the masses. In New Anglia, even your name is not your own.

Lijah Driver is a modern day, working-class teenager whose life is upended when his parents mysteriously vanish. Ministry officials from the Division of Family Intervention snatch Lijah from his home and remand him to the care of an eerie and enigmatic facility known as the Linderhaven Home.

At Linderhaven, Lijah is befriended by Simon Ostler, a congenial youth with a tragic past. He is mentored by Naomi Wilde, a former foundling whose forbidden passions threaten the future she has spent all her life being groomed for. He falls in love with Melissa Dimotika, an orphan whose rare talent attracts the attention of dangerous people.

Linderhaven itself has a deadly secret, one that puts a target on Melissa’s back and threatens to tear the young couple away from each other before their love has a chance to blossom.

Can young love survive in a corrupt system built on class division, exploitation and greed?