Behind the Wall

WHY, I CAN SMILE, AND MURDER WHILES I SMILE

15-year-old Dea has always lived beside the Wall: smooth, white, and as high as a forest canopy. On her side, life is brutal: kill or be killed. One day, a man appears from the other side. His people, he tells her, live in a machine created paradise. And yet, he has never heard a real bird sing, smelled a real flower, or felt the warmth of a fire. Dea takes him over the mountains and to the ocean, shows him the wonders of the world, and on the way, falls in love. But when she becomes pregnant, he abandons her. Determined to hold him to his promises, she follows him back over the Wall. There she is made prisoner and forced to entertain, her ability to kill and survive willfully exploited.

Dea is a fighter. Don’t mess with Dea. When she learns that her imagination has been violated, she punishes the guilty, visiting the sins of the father upon his children.