Unwind

UNWIND; Neal Shusterman; New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007; 335pgs. Young Adult Fiction

After the Heartland War, which pitted Pro-Lifers against Pro-Choicers, a truce is reached with a third option: abortions are outlawed, but any child between the ages of 13 and 18 may be "unwound," or harvested for organs, hair, skin, appendages, all body parts. According to The Bill of Life, "human life may not be touched from the moment of conception until a child reaches the age of thirteen. However, between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, a parent may choose to retroactively 'abort' a child . . . on the condition that the child's life doesn't 'technically' end." Unwanted babies must be delivered full term, but the Storking Initiative allows mothers who don't want, or can't care for their children, to leave them on a doorstep of their choosing--if the mother is caught, she must keep the baby. If she gets away, the baby, by law, belongs to the people on whose doorstep it was found. Connor is being unwound because he fights too much and has become a problem to his parents; Risa is being unwound because she has no parents, and as a ward of the state has no talent significant enough to allow her to continue to take up bed space; Lev is a "tithe" who is being offered by his religious parents as a sacrifice to the greater good of the community. Lev doesn't want to escape his fate, but Connor and Risa do and when they have a chance they make a break for it taking a resistant Lev with them. As the three teens make there way through the Unwinds underground, sometimes together and sometimes separately, a host of moral, ethical, and political issues become part of the nonstop action. One would image such a scenario to be far-fetched, that it would be impossible for parents to discard their children just because they had become troublesome, but Shusterman perhaps believes this: that the child is father to the man; that the seed becomes the flower; that every life is precious at any age or stage. Unforgettable.

LW