Gideon Elmwood is a 16-year-old boy and a third-generation Class R citizen in what was once the Canadian Prairies, confined to a forced-labour farming community. Forbidden to leave his town, he has never known anything but the Regime’s restrictions and his grandfather’s stories of how life used to be.

This year, the unthinkable has happened: the Regime has finally increased the town’s quota beyond what they could ever produce, and the consequences for failure would be deadly. In desperation, Gideon and his friends set out in hopes of finding technology and machines that could save the only home they’ve ever known.

When knowledge of what they find falls into the wrong hands, the townspeople find themselves under the control of a petty but effective tyrant. With the adults incapacitated or coerced into fighting for the tyrant, it falls on Gideon to recover control of the technology and save his family, friends, and neighbours.

If he fails, the Regime will wipe the town off the map rather than risk a threat to their power.

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