This narrator, who is only identified by the close of the novel, explains that they only knew Sarat later in her life, after her innocence was lost and she had played a major role in the South getting its revenge. Omar El Akkad’s American War begins with the narrator introducing us to six-year-old Sarat Chestnut, born amid this national chaos in the remains of Louisiana. With an urge to end the last remnants of resistance as quickly as possible, the North retaliates with equal hate and ferocity. Fracturing, the South becomes desperate, fueled by hatred. Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi form a core of secession, Texas becomes reabsorbed by Mexico, and South Carolina suffers as ground zero in the release of a plague engineered by the North, leaving the state quarantined. Yet, the issues are more complex beyond any single cause. While the issue of slavery drove the original Civil War, southern state refusal to accept a federal ban on fossil fuels stokes the fires of the second. Amid these changes, the Second American Civil War breaks out. Climate change has altered the coasts of the United States, wiping out much of Florida and Louisiana. It is approximately half a century in our future.
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