Amherst Reads Orphans of Canland

From the publisher:

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 heat waves.

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 what a starred Kirkus review calls, “A complicated, rich, and challenging work . . . An impressive debut that goes beneath surface issues of climate-apocalypse fiction,” LA author Daniel Vitale builds a frighteningly plausible dystopia, and 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?

About the author:

Daniel Vitale is a 2015 graduate of Amherst College and recipient of a Lane Fellowship for Creative Arts. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and dog. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times. Orphans of Canland is his debut novel.