After a bloody revolution in America, one true believer thrives in the utopia she helped create. She’s proud to be the perfect wife and mother, the backbone of society, who raises her daughter Penelope to be obedient and grateful to those in power. She pushes down seditious feelings like grief. She killed her husband for the good of society—he was too depressed to be useful.
But then her reassigned husband arrives with bad vibes and a suitcase full of forbidden books. When her toddler Warren is taken by the Church-State because she's failed to form a Stable and Productive Family Unit, her faith begins to crack. She helped build this prison, and Penelope is well-trained in its ways.
At once riotous entertainment and gory fortune-telling, this book asks: How does one raise well-adapted children to survive under totalitarian control? Who do the rules protect? And once we break them, how do we rebuild?