About this item
New York Times bestseller * Six starred reviewsAt once provocative, terrifying, and darkly subversive, Dread Nation is Justina Ireland's stunning vision of an America both foreign and familiar - a country on the brink, at the explosive crossroads where race, humanity, and survival meet.Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania - derailing the War Between the States and changing the nation forever.In this new America, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Education Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead.But there are also opportunities - and Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. It's a chance for a better life for Negro girls like Jane. After all, not even being the daughter of a wealthy white Southern woman could save her from society's expectations.But that's not a life Jane wants. Almost finished with her education at Miss Preston's School of Combat in Baltimore, Jane is set on returning to her Kentucky home and doesn't pay much mind to the politics of the eastern cities, with their talk of returning America to the glory of its days before the dead rose.But when families around Baltimore County begin to go missing, Jane is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, one that finds her in a desperate fight for her life against some powerful enemies. And the restless dead, it would seem, are the least of her problems.Please note that this book has deckle edges (the edges of the paper are purposely rough) .
About the Author
Justina Ireland is the New York Times bestselling author of Dread Nation and its sequel Deathless Divide (Balzer Bray/HarperCollins) , the middle-grade novels Star Wars, Flight of the Falcon: Lando's Luck and Spark of the Resistance, a Star Wars Story (Lucasfilm Books) , and the fantasy young adult novels Vengeance Bound and Promise of Shadows (both Simon and Schuster) . Her short science fiction and fantasy stories have appeared in the anthologies A Phoenix First Must Burn (Viking BFYR) , Feral Youth (Simon and Schuster) , Black Enough (Balzer Bray/HarperCollins) , Three Sides of a Heart (HarperCollins) , and online at Vox.com. She is a former editor in chief of FIYAH Literary Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, for which she won a World Fantasy Award. She holds a BA in History from Armstrong Atlantic State University (now Georgia Southern) and an MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University. Her forthcoming book, Ophie's Ghosts, will be available May 2021.
