Gliff

Award-winning Smith (A Cage Went in Search of a Bird) sets her latest novel in a future dystopian society. Her book centers on two preadolescents, Briar and Rose. When their mother leaves to work at a hotel, and her boyfriend abandons the children, Briar and Rose squat in an empty house, which is eventually demolished. They are “unverifiables,” a group without status that the government wants to control. After discovering and adopting a horse that Rose names Gliff, they live with other unverifiables in an abandoned school. Their world becomes a totalitarian nightmare, with rampant pollution, homelessness, no libraries, and persecution. Government agents eventually capture Briar, while Rose and Gliff escape. Jumping ahead five years, the story turns to Briar, now known as Alan Dale, who works as a department head in charge of a factory production line, some of whose employees, for whom Alan/Briar has little empathy, have been mutilated by handling battery acid at work.