Orphans Evade The Authorities

Written by Michelle Marcotte

It is 2034. Ten years have passed since the election of an authoritarian government split the United States in two, then tricked Alberta away from Canada. What remains is a region stripped of hope, watched by informants, and ruled by fear. 

Most people have learned to keep their heads down.

Jeanne d’Arc and Nimoy Sanchez Champlain have not.

At sixteen, the twins are gifted violinists with a secret far more dangerous than their music. They are telepaths. And when their parents, outspoken opponents of the regime, are forced to flee with barely a moment to spare, Jeanne and Nimoy are left behind, determined to continue their parents’ work and bring them home.

What begins as survival becomes something larger. The twins start moving people across borders, slipping through checkpoints, outwitting a government that does not know who it is dealing with. With the unexpected cover of a not entirely legitimate British diplomat, they set their sights on the impossible: rescuing their parents in Budapest, Hungary.

But they are not the only ones running.

A young Ukrainian woman, a surrogate mother with no country left to return to, is fleeing a Russian invasion with two American babies in her arms. They carry secrets of their own, and their path is about to cross with Jeanne’s and Nimoy’s.

Orphans Evade the Authorities is a sweeping, fast-moving speculative fiction novel about the price of resistance, the stubbornness of love, and what teens are capable of when the adults around them fail to rise to the moment. Written for readers aged 13 to adult, it is the kind of story that begins on page one and does not let go.