Climate change and violent storms have put much of the Gulf coastal area under water, petroleum-based fuel is scarce, and oil tankers are obsolete. As part of a light scavenge crew, Nailer teams with other teens to strip deserted tankers of all valuable scrap material. His future is uncertain, as Nailer is approaching the age when he’ll grow too large to maneuver in tight spaces, but not large enough to qualify for the muscle work of the heavy crew. Earning barely enough to buy food, Nailer and the other scavengers live life on the edge. His drug-using, abusive father is yet another worry in Nailer’s desperate existence. So when he discovers a luxurious clipper ship beached after a hurricane and filled with dead crew members, Nailer believes he’s hit the scavenge mother lode. The potential to change his life for the better seems within reach, but then he discovers the wealthy yacht owner on board. Teeange Nina is badly injured but still alive, and Nailer must decide if he’s able to kill her to claim her riches. The choice he makes propels him into adventure and intrigue in this atmospheric dystopian novel of survival that examines questions of loyalty and ethics in a chillingly changed world. (Age 13 and older)

Set in a dark future America devastated by the forces of climate change, this thrilling bestseller and National Book Finalist is a gritty, high-stakes adventure of a teenage boy faced with conflicting loyalties.

In America's flooded Gulf Coast region, oil is scarce, but loyalty is scarcer. Grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts by crews of young people. Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota--and hopefully live to see another day. But when, by luck or by chance, he discovers an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, Nailer faces the most important decision of his life: Strip the ship for all it's worth or rescue its lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl who could lead him to a better life....

In this powerful novel, Hugo and Nebula Award winning author Paolo Bacigalupi delivers a fast-paced adventure set in the vivid and raw, uncertain future of his companion novels The Drowned Cities and Tool of War.

"Suzanne Collins may have put dystopian literature on the YA map with The Hunger Games...but Bacigalupi is one of the genre's masters, employing inventively terrifying details in equally imaginative story lines." —Los Angeles Times

A New York Times Bestseller
A Michael L. Printz Award Winner
A National Book Award Finalist
A VOYA 2010 Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers Book
A Rolling Stone 40 Best YA Novels Book

Don’t miss the other books in the series:
The Drowned Cities
Tool of War