Kweku Ashworth is a child of the cataclysm, born on a sailboat to parents fleeing the devastation. Growing up in a world forever changed, his only connection to the events that set the earth on its course to disaster are the stories his step-father, now long-dead, recorded in his manuscript, THE FORCING. But there are huge gaps in the story that his mother steadfastly refuses to speak of, even thirty years later. When he discovers evidence that she has tried to cover up the truth, he knows that it is time to find out for himself. Determined to learn what really happened during his mother's escape from the concentration camp to which she and his father were banished, and their subsequent journey halfway around the world, Kweku and his young family set out on a perilous voyage across a devastated planet.
Civilisation is collapsing. Frustrated and angry after years of denial and inaction, a government of youth has taken power in North America, and a policy of institutionalised ageism introduced. All those older than the prescribed age are deemed responsible for the current state of the world, and are to be 'relocated', their property and assets confiscated. David Ashworth and his wife May find themselves among the thousands being moved to the southern deserts. Together, they must come to terms with their new lives in a land rendered unrecognisable. As the terrible truth of their situation is revealed, they plan a perilous escape, lured by rumours of a tropical sanctuary where they can live in peace. But the world outside is more dangerous than they could ever have imagined. And for those who survive, nothing will ever be the same again . . .
Ethan Scofield returns to the place of his birth to bury his father. Hidden in one of the upstairs rooms of the old man's house, he finds a strange manuscript, a collection of stories that seems to cover the whole of his father's turbulent life. As his own starts to unravel, Ethan works his way through the manuscript, trying to find answers to the mysteries that have plagued him since he was a child. What happened to his little brother? Why was his mother taken from him? And why, in the end, when there was no one else left, did his own father push him away? Swinging from the coral cays of the Caribbean to the dangerous deserts of Yemen, this is a story of the indelible damage we do to those closest to us – and of the power of redemption.
