Turning her back on the traditions of her family and community, Rueda Cole forges a new path with the desert wanderer who saved her life. The way is fraught with danger, but the unexplainable drives them onward, even to the ends of the earth.
Together they will journey into the unknown. Together they will bring the world into a new era. Together, they will become the stuff of legends.
One of those novels that demands thought, compels the attention, and refuses to be dismissed, The Cage is the kind of novel that makes Dystopian Fiction so unique, with Smith pulling off a relative rarity in the genre by creating a genuinely original read.
Twenty ago, Cargo Flu swept the world.
The City lives on as the shadow of a former metropolis, but growing again, even thriving, using intensive salvage—machinery, spare parts, even wire and gasoline harvested from the wreckage; planned and managed with rigidly enforced rules and regulations. City life is pleasant, not so different from life before—so long as you stay in line.
Miles outside the City, in the wild areas, refugees from the early chaos settled into a small community, living off the land, farming and ranching. They are modestly successful. But it’s a hard life, agriculture done the ancient way, without mechanical or electrical power. And it’s precarious, imperiled each day by a crippling injury, a life-threatening infection, a crop-destroying blight, or the frailty of advancing age.
Now there are people anticipating war, clever people who think it might be useful, and who don’t want to come in second. Yet the remains of the world are fragile. Salvage is beginning to run out. And the great equalizer, Cargo Flu, is still out there, lurking in forgotten debris.
Four people are groping for the right questions. Two have somehow lost their past, and their futures are bleakly empty. But the four are drawn together, and for a time become friends. New possibilities open to them, ways to build a new world over the ruin of the old.
But they are trapped. Not all tyrants have a name. And the hardest Cage to escape has bars that can’t be seen.
The world is gone. But there are the remains of it.
Brother Tom is a charismatic idealist, who once suffered an excruciating crisis of faith in the ultimate good, but who found a new truth and returned to Andersonville to preach it. Now, each week, a small but growing number of people climb Service Hill and listen to his predawn sermons, drawn by their promise and simple message.
The town around Service Hill has lived off the land for twenty years, stubborn survivors of Cargo Flu. They lack everything, even running water, yet two young people are reinventing electric power, bringing a new optimism to people who thought they would not live to see it again.
And Brother Tom’s faith is endangering their lives. Inevitably, the new faith finds its way into the nearby City, challenging no authority, yet salvaging lost souls who haunt crumbling areas long ago abandoned to the old plague. But a convert is learning secrets he can not live with, and is asking what is the meaning of faith if its believers must suppress the truth for it.
He does not accept the silence. And he does not expect to live to learn the answer.
