TO: Angel Wilson (LawAngel@IBLO.gov)
FROM: Stevie Henry (shenry@gmail.com)
Thanks for coming to see me; but by the time you read this, it will be too late. No one will have started to panic, yet; but in less than two months nothing will be the same. What came first, The Chicken or the Egg Flu? I wish it mattered. But let’s just say, maybe go back to wearing a mask, bathing in sanitizer, and avoid birds and eggs for a bit…
I did not kill my brother. I did quite the opposite, really. It’s the year 2052. Stevie Henry is a Cherokee girl working at a museum in Texas, trying to save up enough money to go to college. The world around her is in a cycle of drought and superstorms, ice and fire … but people get by. But it’s about to get a whole lot worse.
When a mysterious boy shows up at Stevie’s museum saying that he’s from the future -- and telling her what is to come -- she refuses to believe him. But soon she will have no choice.
From the author of the Walter Award-winning
Man Made Monsters comes a YA novel that conjures our futures in startling life – the ones that we are headed towards, and the ones we can still work towards.
It's 2052, and the world is running out of time-but Stevie Henry doesn't know that yet.
Stevie is just trying to save enough money for college before summer ends. That's how she ended up working at the gift shop in the art museum. The world around her is in a cycle of drought and superstorms, ice and fire. . .but people get by.
Then a new intern named Adam shows up. Charming, mysterious, and evasive about his past-he's a perfect distraction. Except he claims he's traveled back from the year 2201 to save priceless art from an impending catastrophe.
Stevie doesn't believe him. Not at first.
When the signs Adam described start coming true-and the people she loves most are pulled into danger-she has to decide how far she'll go to protect her family when the future itself is warning her that nothing will be the same.
Blending time travel, climate fiction, and Indigenous futurism, The Art Thieves is a gripping, emotionally charged novel from Walter Award-winning author Andrea L. Rogers. Perfect for readers of Nnedi Okorafor, Angeline Boulley, and Octavia Butler, this is a story about what we choose to hold onto (and fight for) when the world as we know it starts to unravel.
T H E M E S
Read this if you are interested in:
Climate fiction · Eco-dystopia · Indigenous futurism · Time travel · Family & sacrifice · Cultural preservation · Art history · Hopeful futures
P R A I S E
"The Art Thieves is a book that is both exciting to read and deeply thoughtful about our reality as well as the larger literary landscape of post-apocalyptic fiction. I couldn't put it down, and as soon as I finished reading, I wanted to find something else like it. I even found myself hoping that Rogers might be working on a series. The Art Thieves is reminiscent of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and is in conversation with Afrofuturism more broadly."
-Southern Review of Books
¿ "Rogers employs smart and empathetic prose to present a realistically rendered science fiction tale that is at once adrenaline-pumping and emotionally moving. In this gripping adventure, Rogers considers the future of Indigenous heritage via an indomitable protagonist who, alongside a plethora of memorably realized characters, navigates tough issues relating to death, familial turmoil, exploitation, and climate collapse."
-Publishers Weekly (starred)
¿ "A stirring story about choosing to create a new future when disaster seems inevitable Rogers's sophomore YA novel skillfully discusses the current affairs, pop culture, and climate-change related extreme weather events of the future and powerfully relates them to historical and contemporary legacies of racism and oppression.... Award-winning author Andrea L. Rogers paints a stunning picture of what it means to hope for a better future and the strength it might take to make that future real."
-Shelf-Awareness (starred)
