Review Detail

When Zoe's school is closed by the governor as a cost saving measure (why tax people and use their money for things they don't want?), she finds herself graduated and in line for a job at ALLMart. Her mother, knowing that the house is foreclosed and it's a matter of time before she has nowhere to live, abandons Zoe and moves to the city. This is not unusual in the dystopian landscape that Zoe inhabits; money is tight, consuming merchandise is the driving factor in the economy, and whole neighborhoods are abandoned when people can't meet their mortgages. After she gets a job at ALLMart, Zoe realizes there is no bus from her house, and Timmer, a fellow employee, comes to her rescue. He is living in an abandoned strip mall with a little boy who won't speak after being abandoned by his family, and invites her to stay with him. She does, all the while hoping that her mother will call. Things go from bad to worse when she realizes her paycheck goes mostly back to ALLMart to pay for her uniform, and a friend of Timmer's brings a baby home from the care center at ALLMart, and the group has to find a way to turn it over to the authorities without being caught. Zoe tries to retrieve her mother's belongings from storage when the contents are about to be auctioned, but that's the bright spot-- things don't get any better in this realistically dystopian book.