I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Title: Trashlands
Author: Alison Stine
Publisher: MIRA Books
Release Date: 10.26.21
Publisher’s Summary
A resonant, visionary novel about the power of art and the sacrifices we are willing to make for the ones we love
A few generations from now, the coastlines of the continent have been redrawn by floods and tides. Global powers have agreed to not produce any new plastics, and what is left has become valuable: garbage is currency.
In the region-wide junkyard that Appalachia has become, Coral is a “plucker,” pulling plastic from the rivers and woods. She’s stuck in Trashlands, a dump named for the strip club at its edge, where the local women dance for an endless loop of strangers and the club's violent owner rules as unofficial mayor.
Amid the polluted landscape, Coral works desperately to save up enough to rescue her child from the recycling factories, where he is forced to work. In her stolen free hours, she does something that seems impossible in this place: Coral makes art.
When a reporter from a struggling city on the coast arrives in Trashlands, Coral is presented with an opportunity to change her life. But is it possible to choose a future for herself?
Told in shifting perspectives, Trashlands is a beautifully drawn and wildly imaginative tale of a parent's journey, a story of community and humanity in a changed world.
My Review
Alison Stine is back with another spectacular work of speculative fiction. Set in the near future, Trashlands transports readers to another vision of Stine's dystopian Appalachia. In Road Out of Winter, Stine envisioned a world in a state of near-perpetual winter, and now Trashlands showcases a world devastated by floods and tornadoes, where most cities are barely still standing and plastic is the only form of currency. Full of Scrappalachian plastic gatherers called "pluckers," and workers at the Trashlands strip club, Trashlands is a quiet analysis of how much things can change and how much they can stay the same--power is held in the hands of a few, traumatic events have lifelong consequences, and love is complicated. This novel has firmly cemented Alison Stine into my "auto-buy" authors category.
Author Bio: 
Alison Stine is an award-winning poet and author. Recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and an Ohio Arts Council grant, she was a Wallace Stegner Fellow and received the Studs Terkel Award for Media and Journalism. She works as a freelance reporter with The New York Times, writes for The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, 100 Days in Appalachia, ELLE, The Kenyon Review, and others, and has been a storyteller on The Moth. After living in Appalachian Ohio for many years, she now lives and writes in Colorado with her partner, her son, and a small orange cat.
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