East

East, Kirk Kjeldsen, Grenzland Press, 2019

America is no more. It has collapsed, politically and economically. Job, a teenager living in the Pacific Northwest with his older brother, has just learned that his mother is not dead. She abandoned her sons several years previously, and went to look for work in China, untouched by the collapse.

He gets on a train to the Free State of San Francisco. Job, and a bunch of other refugees, gets on a fishing boat for a very illegal trip across the Pacific. It is a harrowing trip, stuck in the dark, stinking hold of the boat. When they reach China, Job is handed over to a man who takes him to a factory near the city of Chongqing. It is the sort of place surrounded by a chain link fence with barbed wire on top. The hours are long and dangerous, the food is meager and the pay is mostly non-existent.

After a year, Job escapes the factory and moves from job to job. He spends every spare moment showing an old picture (the only one he has) at every factory he can find in Chongqing. He eventually gets a job as a motorbike delivery driver. The food and pay are decent, and it lets him spread out to more factories. He learns that he ought to start looking for his mother in the city's brothels and whorehouses. After several more months, he sees a woman who looks a lot like his mother. He runs after her.

This is an excellent Young Adult novel. The author does a very good job from start to finish. I wonder if this is the sort of thing experienced by Latin American refugees coming to America (before the recent refugee flood). It is very much recommended.