RELEASE DATE. April 8, 2014
PUBLISHER. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)PURCHASE. AMAZON
SYNOPSIS. Divided by day and night and on the run from authorities, star-crossed young lovers unearth a sinister conspiracy in this compelling romantic thriller.
Seventeen-year-old Soleil Le Coeur is a Smudge—a night dweller prohibited by law from going out during the day. When she fakes an injury in order to get access to and kidnap her newborn niece—a day dweller, or Ray—she sets in motion a fast-paced adventure that will bring her into conflict with the powerful lawmakers who order her world, and draw her together with the boy she was destined to fall in love with, but who is also a Ray.
Set in a vivid alternate reality and peopled with complex, deeply human characters on both sides of the day-night divide, Plus One is a brilliantly imagined drama of individual liberty and civil rights, and a fast-paced romantic adventure story.
EXCERPT
Stardust
One night when I was still a freshman I came to class and there was a new drawing on the desk: an exquisitely rendered human heart. It was not the kind of heart that little kids draw and cut out to make valentines, with two plump cheeks at the top and a pointy V at the bottom. It was an anatomically perfect sketch, tipped slightly as real hearts are, showing the aorta, the pulmonary artery and veins, and the vena cava—although I wouldn’t have remembered the location of any of those if they hadn’t been carefully labeled. My desk partner had drawn the heart as if it had been sliced almost all the way in two by a sharp knife, which was no small feat since the drawing was three-dimensional and looked like real muscle tissue. Below it was a poem. But it wasn’t one I would have ridiculed, or forced Poppu to dissect to expose its pretentiousness. It was raw, an open wound, and it brought tears to my eyes.
I am empty I am released from a ship In space I am unmoored Vast nothingness Aching for what was lost Wanting what will never be And suddenly The after-moment of now versus then The paradigm shift The world in too sharp relief The past and future overlap In front of my eyes Death and life Love and its mysterious absence A knowledge I am not a player I am a spectator
I read it again and again until I had it by heart. I heard nothing my teacher said the entire period, not a word. I had no com-fort to offer my friend, even though it’s what I most wanted to do, and in that way I felt an impotence that matched the tone of the poem itself.
A worry forced its way into my mind. Was it a girl he was talking about? Wasn’t that a broken heart he had drawn? Had he fallen in love with someone? Wanting what was lost. Love and its mysterious absence.
I felt socked in the chest, and I didn’t know why. He was the equivalent of a pen pal, after all; a confidant at most. Nothing had changed: if our paths crossed in the hall I still wouldn’t recognize him. If he saw me, I would seem a stranger. He wouldn’t wrap his arms around me, his beloved friend.
The bell rang, and every other student got up to leave, scraping chairs, laughing, stuffing books in backpacks, drop-ping papers. My time to help him was up, and I felt a rising panic that I would fail him.
I was no poet, I had no right to even try. But I hastily added these four lines, and I left the room without allowing myself to reconsider.
Powerless But for the stardust Unknowing I trail through her heart
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR. Elizabeth Fama is the author of PLUS ONE (FSG, 2014), MONSTROUS BEAUTY (FSG, 2012), a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults selection and Odyssey Award honor winner, and OVERBOARD (Cricket Books, 2002), an ALA Best Books for Young Adults. She is represented by Sara Crowe of Harvey Klinger, Inc.
GIVEAWAY
A COPY OF PLUS ONE
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