The Country of Ice Cream Star

Ice Cream Star is a courageous and charismatic 15-year-old girl, a near elder in her small band of black children living in the chaotic Massachusetts countryside in the aftermath of an epidemic that has wiped out most of the population. The disease continues to infect and kill all people before they reach their 20th birthday. As her older brother falls ill and she assumes leadership of her tribe, Ice Cream forms an unlikely friendship with Pasha, one of the rarely glimpsed white "roos" (Russians) who are widely feared and despised. Pasha, whose people have developed a cure, inspires Ice Cream to lead her tribe on an expedition to acquire the remedy through warfare. This literary dystopia inhabits a fully imagined, remarkably inventive universe with its own bizarre rituals and language. Ice Cream narrates the entire tale in an invented patois with an unusual cadence incorporating odd bits of French.