β Scribed by Pam Bachorz
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
For 200 years, Ruby and the Congregation have been enslaved by Darwin West and his Overseers, forced to harvest water for a mysterious Visitor. Brutally beaten and starved, they struggle through each year while waiting faithfully for their savior, Otto, to return and free them. Rubyβs duty to the Congregation keeps her from running: they would die without her, because only her blood can give the water its healing and life-sustaining properties. When she meets Ford, a new Overseer also trapped in his role, they fall in love and long for a life free of crushing obligations. Ruby is as much a slave to the Congregation as they are to Darwin, and she is believably conflicted, desiring change without losing hope. Bachorz uses this dystopian premise to explore powerful themes of faith and loyalty, freedom and slavery, but the integral supernatural and world-building elements are not fully developed, raising a host of interesting questions that are never answered. The unrelenting bleakness and slow pacing will further limit the audience for this brooding, thought-provoking story. Grades 7-10. --Krista Hutley
_A young girl thirsts for love and freedom, but at what cost?
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Ruby dreams of escaping the Congregation. Escape from slaver Darwin West and his cruel Overseers. Escape from the backbreaking work of gathering Water. Escape from living as if it is still 1812, the year they were all enslaved.
When Ruby meets Fordβan irresistible, kind, forbidden new Overseerβshe longs to run away with him to the modern world where she could live a normal teenage life. Escape with Ford would be so simple.
But if Ruby leaves, her community is condemned to certain death. She, alone, possesses the secret ingredient that makes the Water so specialβher bloodβand itβs the one thing that the Congregation cannot live without.
Drought is the haunting story of one communityβs thirst for life, and the dangerous struggle of the only girl who can grant it.
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