Searing sun because the Gatherers couldn’t be bothered Murdered on the sides of roads, rotting, staring into the Girls who don’t pass their inspection are shipped to aīrothel in the scarlet districts. The other girls never make it to the television screen.

Who is approaching the lethal age of twenty-five. Yet beautiful teenage brides, on the arm of a wealthy man Will I becomeĪ murdered reject? Sold into prostitution? These things Her whole familyĭisappeared after that, moved away, either to find her orīecause they knew she would never be returned. They disappearįrom their beds or from the side of the road. Girls have been disappearing for a long time. I stand in line with the other girls, and men in gray The big open sky waits in its usual place. We stumble when they let us out we’ve forgotten how Other girls in horror, not wanting to begin or end. Through the birth canal, and at once the blinding tunnel We’ve gone too long without speaking,Īnd all we do is bury ourselves more into the dark. To pound and scream-there’s metal in the sound-but I know when one of the girls reaches a wall. Like rats, staring out, and dream of our bodies swaying. They keep us in the dark for so long that But in a world that continues to spiral into anarchy, is there any hope for freedom? Excerpt Together with one of Linden's servants, Gabriel, Rhine attempts to escape just before her seventeenth birthday. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next and Rhine has no way to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband’s strange world is what it seems. He opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought existed, and it almost makes it possible to ignore the clock ticking away her short life. Yet her husband, Linden, is hopelessly in love with her, and Rhine can’t bring herself to hate him as much as she’d like to. When Rhine is sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Geneticists seek a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males born with a lifespan of 25 years, and females a lifespan of 20 years-leaving the world in a state of panic. What if you knew exactly when you’d die? The first book of The Chemical Garden Trilogy.īy age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live.

Wither destefano novel