In a future world in the ruins of North America, the Laws and Ways of the Sentinel control everyone and everything. The Sentinel's rule is enforced by The Black Sentry, his ominous ever-present police force. Every aspect of the villagers' lives is dictated by the Sentinel's orderly inescapable plan--including the Winnowing, the armed combat each boy is required to undergo on his sixteenth birthday.
Daman Adkins is worried about his impending Winnowing, but he's even more troubled by everyone's blind acceptance of the Sentinel's inflexible regime. With the help of Brita, the brilliant girl he admires, and a slave, Xander, he tries to learn more about the fabled Resistance—the only people brave enough to stand up against the Sentinel. When Daman meets a Rebel on the run, he is forced to choose between the dull but predictable life he has known all his life--and the slim chance for a better world.
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WILLIAM BERNHARDT is the bestselling author of more than sixty books, including The Florentine Poet, The Game Master, the popular Ben Kincaid and Daniel Pike courtroom novels, and Nemesis: The Final Case of Eliot Ness. Bernhardt founded WriterCon, which hosts writing workshops and small-group retreats, an annual conference, and also offers a newsletter and magazine on Substack. His programs have educated more than three dozen now-published authors. He holds a master’s degree in English literature, has won the Oklahoma Book Award twice, and has received the Southern Writers Guild’s Gold Medal Award, the Royden B. Davis Distinguished Author Award (University of Pennsylvania), and the H. Louise Cobb Distinguished Author Award (Oklahoma State), which is given “in recognition of an outstanding body of work that has profoundly influenced the way in which we understand ourselves and American society at large.” In addition to the novels, he has written plays, a musical (book and music), humor, nonfiction, children’s books, biography, poetry, and crossword puzzles. He is a member of PEN International and the Academy of American Poets.