"A complicated, rich, and challenging work . . . An impressive debut that goes beneath surface issues of climate-apocalypse fiction."
-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
It's 2088, and the dust has settled on America, decades after an environmental collapse. The eco-totalitarian organization, WORLD, has reconfigured society with the intention of restoring nature. Twelve-year-old eternal optimist Tristan Weekes lives in what he believes must be paradise: Canland, an agrarian California desert-greening project. However, Tristan's life-defining medical condition, analgesia, prevents him from feeling physical pain, leaving his brain's stress centers unresponsive to everything from ego-blows to heatwaves.
Well-intended, curious, and wielding a stunning vocabulary, Tristan loves to listen to the subversive theories spouted by his older brother, Dylan, a drug-addicted satellite hacker. He also wants to prove his independence to his mother, Helena, a powerful population control-extremist. Meanwhile, all around him, the survivors of the environmental collapse are just working toward a better tomorrow. But when a slew of violent acts befalls Canland, Tristan must confront certain truths about the community he loves-including his family's secrets, his own involvement in the horrors enacted by WORLD, and the debts that are owed to the orphans of Canland.
In this work of literary fiction, set against the backdrop of a frighteningly plausible dystopia, Daniel Vitale explores the fate of our planet, the nature of family, and the duty of science, as Orphans of Canland asks: What does it mean to belong on Earth?