Aldin

Climate change has devolved North America into a feudal version of the Wild West. Every life depends on water owned by the few, and the sentence for an unauthorized pregnancy is to wander the desert until dead.

Sixteen-year-old ranch hand, Aldin, idolizes eighteen-year-old Claire. Even after Balder splits her lip at a general assembly of the ranch's workers, Claire defiantly refuses to name her baby's father. But rather than allow Balder to strike Claire with his cane, Aldin steps forward tacitly admitting fatherhood. Four months after being forced off their ranch, Claire gives birth to her son in The Long Now, a real-world, eighty-foot monument to generational responsibility. 

Despite their death sentence, Aldin promises his involuntary bride he will stand by her and see her to safety. To keep his promise and win over his reluctant wife, Aldin battles baby-stealing coy-wolves, wife-stealing fundamentalists, soul-stealing parents—and thirst—the omnipresent predator that prowls this arid land.