Chapter 3

This segment was recorded in my home studio and edited by yours truly. Thank you for listening! Chapter Summary: Marielle begrudgingly attends a birthday party a local pub with Ari and her other friends. Book info: The date is 2198. The nuclear winter has passed, and times are dire. A rebel in her own way, 18-year-old Marielle is tired of scraping out a living in a small town at the base of the Rocky Mountains— tired of the hunger, tired of the danger, tired of the drama. Escape is on her mind until Fionn, son of the local Representative, casts an unexpected ray of Colorado sun on Marielle’s bleak world. But the draw of freedom is not a light easily extinguished, even in the shadows of first love. Before she can decide her own future, Marielle’s beloved is called up for military service by the Commissioner and her town is ransacked by an unknown enemy. She is forced to go on the run, with only an injured horse and a shell-shocked child as companions, until the trio is given refuge by the most unexpected of allies. A reluctant heroine at first, Marielle soon finds herself caught up in the heart of a revolutionary movement, political corruption and ultimately, a clandestine positioning in the shadows of the Commissioner’s inner sphere in order to stave off disaster at the hands of the tyrant. Amidst it all, Marielle must figure out how to be true to her heart, while also staying true to her conscience—and the cause. Inspired by regional Northern Colorado icons Isabella Bird and the Dickerson sisters, Marielle is a post-apocalyptic fiction novel drafted in the spirit of Robin Hood, written in the tone of Sarah J. Maas’s series A Court of Thorns and Roses, with action and adventure on par with Veronica Roth's series, Divergent.