A Philip

K. Dick Award Nominee

""The novel is as tense and thrilling as any of Brown's work, and as full of rage and hope. It's a novel that truly reckons with the enormity of both our climate emergency and the system that produced it - a tale of human imperfection and redemption."" -- Cory Doctorow, bestselling author of Walkaway

In this

second dystopian legal thriller from the author of the acclaimed Rule of

Capture and Tropic

of Kansas, lawyer Donny Kimoe juggles two

intertwined cases whose outcomes will determine the course of America’s

future—and his own.

In

the aftermath of a second American revolution, peace rests on a fragile truce. The

old regime has been deposed, but the ex-president has vanished, escaping

justice for his crimes. Some believe he is dead. Others fear he is in hiding,

gathering forces. As the factions in Washington work to restore order, Donny

Kimoe is in court to settle old scores—and pay his own debts come due.

Meanwhile,

the rebels Donny once defended are exacting their own kind of justice. In the

ruins of New Orleans, they are building a green utopia—and kidnapping their

defeated adversaries to pay for it. The newest hostage is the young heiress to

a fortune made from plundering the country—and the daughter of one of Donny’s oldest

friends. In a desperate gambit to save his own skin, Donny switches sides to

defend her before the show trial. If he fails, so will the truce, dragging the

country back into violence. But by taking the case, he risks his last chance to

expose the atrocities of the dictatorship—and being tried for his own crimes

against the revolution.

To save the future, Donny has to gamble his own. The

only way out is to find the evidence that will get both sides back to the table,

and secure a more lasting peace. To do that, Donny must betray his clients’

secrets. Including one explosive secret hidden in the ruins, the discovery of

which could extinguish the last hope for a better tomorrow—or, if Donny plays

it right, keep it burning.