The Mercy Journals

March 21, 2016
It's 2047, and a third world war and climate change have left billions dead. A new global government has created a set of emergency laws to facilitate humanity's survival. Allen "Mercy" Quincy enforces new environmental standards. But Allen isn't without his demons, not the least of which is the unknown location of his two sons. He suffers from PTSD and journals as a process of "mnemectomy"âattempting to degrade unwanted memories by placing them outside of himself. But memory is a difficult thing to escape, and when Allen's selfish, self-destructive brother Leo reappears, begging him to travel north to their family's cabin on Vancouver Island, Allen is besieged by the past. The book, presented as a pair of journals uncovered in 2072, is part cautionary tale, part survival narrative. Each journal has its own feel: the first details Allen's day-to-day life and his brief affair with a dancer; the second is more introspective, with days and weeks bleeding together as Allen and Leo confront one another. Casper (The Reconstruction) employs clear, concise prose that at a steady clip, and the exploration, through one man's account, of what it means to outlive one's purpose is tightly constructed if not especially groundbreaking. Agent: Phyllis Wender, Gersh Agency.

May 1, 2016
A change in the weather caused the deaths of four billion people and a global collapse of nation-states. Army veteran Allen Levy Quincy, nicknamed Mercy, begins keeping a journal in 2047 in an attempt to protect his shredded sanity. His parents and wife have died, he's lost track of his sons and his brother, and he is haunted by a genocidal horror on the U.S.-Mexico border. Allen has been following a frugal routine in what used to be Seattle, breaking the law against owning pets for the peaceful companionship of goldfish. But then this solitary, one-legged, alcoholic soldier meets Ruby, a self-possessed dancer attempting to corral her own grief, and his brother reappears, a veritable maelstrom of chaos and greed. They end up at their family's cabin on cougar-stalked Vancouver Island, where conflicts over how to live precipitate a Cain-and-Abel confrontation. Posing profound questions about compassion, values, and our capacity for life-saving change, Canadian author Casper performs a remarkably incisive and sensitive variation on the dystopian theme in this suspenseful and provocative tale of sacrifice and survival.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)