We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Shutouts, a new dystopian SF novel by Gabrielle Korn set in the world of Yours for the Taking, out from St. Martin’s Press on December 3rd. We also have an excerpt of the audiobook (narrated by Gail Shalan) for you at the end of this post!
The year is 2041, and it’s a dangerous time to be a woman driving across the United States alone. Deadly storms and uncontrollable wildfires are pummeling the country while political tensions are rising. But Kelly’s on the road anyway; she desperately needs to get back to her daughter, who she left seven years ago for a cause that she’s no longer sure she believes in.
Almost 40 years later, another mother, Ava, and her daughter Brook are on the run as well, from the climate change relief program known as The Inside Project, where they’ve spent the past 22 years being treated as lab rats. When they encounter a woman from Ava’s past on the side of the highway, the three continue on in a journey that will take them into the depths of what remains of humanity out in the wilderness.
At the same time, way up North, weather conditions continue to worsen and a settlement departs in search of greener pastures, leaving behind only two members, drawn together by a circumstance and a mystery they are destined to unravel together.
APRIL 1, 2041
My daughter,
The first thing I need to tell you—and after that I want to tell you everything—is that I never meant to leave you for this long. In a perfect world, of course, I wouldn’t have left at all. I wouldn’t have needed to. But this world, as I imagine you have learned by now, is far from perfect.
I know it’s probably an odd thing, getting a letter in the mail. But I think this is the safest way to communicate. The digital surveillance has gotten so tight that no email would make it to you without the feds combing through it, not at this point. And with all that attention going into the virtual world, little is being spent analyzing what you can hold in your hands. At least, that’s my hope. It’s my bet.
So, here I am, writing you a letter. I’ll write and send you one letter from every place I stop, as I cross the country to get back to you. It’s already been a long, hard road, and I’ve barely gotten started.
I want to know you so badly. But you’re almost a teenager now, which means you’re nearly a woman, and I know from my own experiences that means you’re wholly your own person, perhaps more like a stranger than my own daughter.
I also know that it’s not fair for me to want to know you without also being available for you to know; not just the version of myself that I could invent to make you forgive me, but the truth. A truth that is not always beautiful. As your mother I do have this strange desire to only present you with things of beauty. I hate that you have to know ugliness. But my leaving, I know, was an ugliness. Perhaps the first you ever experienced. Perhaps just the first of many bad things that happened to you. I wish I knew. I hope that soon you’ll tell me.
I’ve tried to call you many times over the past six years. When I first left I called every day. Your father never let me speak to you. He didn’t want to hear about why I’d taken off, only why I wasn’t back yet, since I’d left a note saying I’d return in a couple of days. He eventually blocked my number. I’ve tried emailing every combination of your name I can think of that might take me to you. I have a Google alert for you. I’ve checked the local school records, but all I can find is that you’re still enrolled, which doesn’t help me. In some ways I admire that you don’t seem to be on social media (not a surprise; your father was never on it, either). I wonder if it’s intentional. I don’t know what your father told you about me. I imagine he didn’t tell you about the calls. You must hate me. I deserve that. So let me tell you why I’m writing to you now. I hope you believe my story once it’s told. Of course, truth is subjective. I want to tell you my truth as best I can—the things I experienced and the things I came to know. What you do with that info is yours. Some of it might seem like a conspiracy theory, the rantings of a woman desperate to win her daughter back. Well: I am desperate. But I’ve also always been honest, maybe to a fault. I wonder if you remember that about me.
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The Shutouts
The Shutouts
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For the past four nights I’ve been sleeping in my car (well, technically it’s not my car, but more on that later), which I honestly don’t mind, but there were tornado warnings last night on the radio. I pulled off the highway and into a small rural neighborhood as the wind started to pick up. I knocked on the door of the first house I saw. No answer, all the lights off. No car in the driveway. I drove to the next one, a few miles down the road. An elderly couple opened the door, looking terrified at the sight of me or maybe it was just the trees behind me, threatening to snap right off their roots. I asked if I could stay the night and they shook their heads, closed the door in my face. I understand it, I guess. I’m a stranger. I probably looked a little feral, as I sometimes do. I drove as fast as I could back to the first house and peered in the windows until I could be sure there was no one there and then I used a rock to break a window and climb in. I braced myself for an alarm, but none came.
It’s not abandoned; there’s food in the fridge and clothes in the closets, evidence of a family everywhere. But when I got here it was late enough that I figured no one would come home at least for the night. I brought blankets and food down to their basement, where I hope I’ll be safe. I’m writing to you using the light of a flashlight I found down here. I’m scared if I turn on lights, the neighbors will call the cops. I hope if they come home while I’m still here, I’ll be able to explain myself before they, I don’t know, shoot me. You’d think people would be sympathetic to a girl on the road in the middle of a storm, but who knows these days.
I am truly in the middle of nowhere, or at least, the middle of Idaho, which to me might as well be Mars. The road isn’t paved, can you believe it? I’m not sure how long I’ll have to stay here, or how long before these people come home. I was eager to move as quickly as possible toward you, but it seemed Mother Nature, as always, had her own ideas. Mothers, right? Ha.
If I make good time, my letters will reach you before I do, over the next few weeks. Hopefully this will prepare you for my arrival. Hopefully everything will get to you before your father finds it. That’s why the return address says your father’s sister-in-law’s name. I doubt he’d open mail from your aunt to you. When you were little, you were close with her. I hope you still are, and that it’s believable that she’d be writing to you.
When you read the last of my letters, you’ll have a choice to make. But before I present you with that choice, you need to know everything that’s going into it. Everything that’s happened since I left.
I’ll start from the beginning. Some of it might feel like too much information. I am not sure how much a girl wants to know about her mom. If it were me, I’d want to be spared the intimate details, but you’re not me. I hope you are curious, that you want details, that you might even be hungry for the truth about me. If I’m wrong, I’m sorry in advance. Skip over things if you want. I just can’t tell you the story of my leaving without the story of my heart, which I have followed over the years into various situations, some wonderful and some terrifying and dangerous. I like to imagine that you’re like me in this way. You were always so brave.
Anyway. I’ve struggled to find the true beginning of this story, but I think it starts when I was a few years older than you: seventeen. And I was completely on my own.
Excerpted from The Shutouts, copyright © 2024 by Gabrielle Korn.
