CAMP ZERO

A young Korean American woman must forge her own path and protect her mother in an uncertain future.

It’s 2049, and 25-year-old Rose accepts a dangerous assignment from Damien, her master-of-the-universe boss, who promises that she and her mother will be set with income and housing for life in a precarious, ever warming world if she succeeds. On her mission, she’ll continue as a sex worker alongside five other women while keeping an eye on Damien’s interests in a new, secretive project. Meanwhile, Grant Grimley just wants to escape the reach of his family’s vast wealth, a legacy created from centuries of extraction. He accepts a teaching job that guarantees to get him off the grid. Rose and Grant, both Americans, arrive at a camp in the Canadian wilderness, a frigid frontier of sorts, where a renowned architect seeks to build a refuge from climate catastrophe. Not too far off, a group of women—American soldiers and scientists—is creating a sanctuary of their own to survive an imperiled planet. It's a smart setup. The author has imagined an array of futuristic ideas stemming from our present, including a next-generation smartphone that’s implanted as a chip behind people's ears at birth and a Floating City off Boston’s shores where the elite live in bliss while the rest of the population deals with worsening hurricanes and wildfires. But this creativity doesn’t quite pay off. There’s a decades-old oil ban in place, for example, but its geopolitical consequences barely surface. The chip means more connectivity—and surveillance—than ever before, but this doesn’t much impact the story. Some characters lack complexity, and their backstories, once revealed, are underwhelming. However, the book has a soul that generates momentum. It’s committed to the bonds of family, the ones we are born into and the ones we choose, as a way forward in an increasingly chaotic world.

A love letter to what communities of women can accomplish when they work in concert.