America Pacifica

Anna North's dark, gripping and wildly creative debut, America Pacifica, goes where few Iowa Writers' Workshop grads have gone before: a futuristic end-of-days setting where the buildings are made of sea-fiber and solvent-huffing hoodlums roam the streets. Still, North's story of a young girl in search of her mother (and her island's history) is remarkably universal, with characters as real those found in any contemporary fiction.