Gutter Child

by Jael Richardson

Genres: General Fiction; Literary Fiction; Dystopian

Synopsis

A fierce and heartbreaking debut from FOLD founder Jael Richardson about a young woman who must find the courage to determine her own future

Imagine a world in which the hopeless and vulnerable are forced to buy their freedom by working off their debt to society. Imagine a world divided into the privileged Mainland and the policed Gutter. In that world lives Elimina Dubois, one of only 100 children selected as a social experiment by the Mainland government to be taken from their mothers in the Gutter and raised in the land of opportunity.

But when her Mainland mother dies when Elimina is just a teenager, the girl finds herself all alone, forced into an unfamiliar life of servitude, unsure of who she is and where she belongs. Now she must befriend the Gutter children, who make their own way through the crushing cycle of the Gutter System in whatever ways they know how. And Elimina will discover that what she needs more than anything may not be the freedom she imagined after all.

Gutter Child takes us on a young woman’s journey through a fractured world of heartbreaking disadvantages and horrific injustices. Richardson’s Elimina is a modern heroine in an altered but all too recognizable reality who must find the strength within herself to forge her future and defy a system that tries to shape her destiny.

Release date: January 26, 2021

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Print pages: 320