It's 15 years after The Split, when the United States peacefully divided itself into two countries, the Confederation of Conservative States of America (CCSA), the former red states, and the USA, the former blue states. Like a divorced couple living in the same house, they share the continent in an uneasy, tenuous equilibrium.
In the heart of the CCSA, Perfecton, Texas, Lorinda Moon-a twenty-something bartender-discovers that she is pregnant after a one-night stand. But she's a woman with plans, and those plans don't include spending months in the Austin Breeding Center followed by the mandatory marriage prescribed by the laws of the CCSA.
On the run from a Confederated agent obsessed with her capture, Lorinda is taken up by an underground railroad of volunteers dedicated to helping women like her get the medical attention they need. With the assistance of two young men, Lorinda must traverse the ravaged, violent landscape of the CCSA to find safety in the USA. En route she will visit a series of bizarre, seriously whackadoodle "enclaves" dedicated to various political and religious lifestyles, satirical extrapolations of today's red-state insanities. She will discover that nothing-neither her country nor the circumstances of The Split-are what she had been led to believe.
It's Mad Max meets Gulliver's Travels, and increasingly resembles the real USA of 2025.
Radlauer, Steve: - Steve Radlauer was born in Brooklyn before Brooklyn was cool. He is the author or co-author of a bunch of books, including Monsters of the Ivy League (Little, Brown, with The Split's own Ellis Weiner), The Historic Shops & Restaurants of New York (The Little Bookroom, with Ellen Williams), Dan Quayle: Airhead Apparent (Behind The News Press, with Paul Slansky), Townie Planet (auto-published), and Special Moments (Ballantine Books, with Joe Bodolai).His byline has appeared in a plethora of periodicals, including New York magazine, Spy, Esquire, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Asian Art News, Cosmopolitan, Hamptons Country, and the Irrational Inquirer and Off The Wall Street Journal parodies. He has worked in television as a writer and producer, is a founder of a travel-app developer, has been a creative on dozens of advertising campaigns and an officer of two non-profit arts organizations. A long time ago he owned a restaurant.He lives in Manhattan.
Weiner, Ellis: - Ellis Weiner began as an editor with National Lampoon, moved on to freelancing for a thousand magazines back when they existed, and was one of the original columnists ("How to Be a Grownup") of the much-lamented Spy magazine. In 1980 he began contributing to the New Yorker, which still exists.He is, with his late wife, Barbara Davilman, co-author of the best-selling Yiddish With Dick and Jane, as well as How to Raise a Jewish Dog and How to Profit From the Coming Rapture (Little, Brown). Solo, he is author of many books, including The Joy of Worry (Chronicle) and the middle-grade series The Templeton Twins Have an Idea and The Templeton Twins Make a Scene (Chronicle).And, of course, he is co-author, with Steve Radlauer, of Monsters of the Ivy League (Little, Brown).He lives in Los Angeles.
