THE GATHERING

For the first time in a year, all five lights were on one map. They had ninety-six hours to make the world blink.

The five Climate Keepers — Ndidi of Lagos, Riya of Rajasthan, Marco of Cartagena, Lena of Malmö, Toa of Samoa — have been on the same small green frequency for a year. They have never met.

This week they fly, one at a time, to Belém, on the mouth of the Amazon, where the United Nations Climate Conference is preparing to sign the Adaptation Finance Compact — a treaty that, on page eighty-three, in fifteen lines of polite English, would write fifteen million climate-displaced people out of protection forever.

The five Keepers are not delegates. They are youth observers. They are sixteen and seventeen years old. They have, among them: a printed brief, a small wooden trunk, a thumb drive, a livestream rig in a grey case, a single silver-blue shell, and four grandmothers waiting on four phones.

They have ninety-six hours.

For readers ages 13 and up. The converging finale of The Reckoning. Rotating first-person chapters in each Keeper's established voice. A teen ensemble assembled at last. A climactic three-minute speech at the General Assembly. And the small green light that finally registers all five lights — for the first time — on one map.

This is the finale of The Reckoning. Each previous book stands alone, but this one is most powerful read after the first five. Book One: High Water. Book Two: Dry. Book Three: Bleach. Book Four: Greenwash. Book Five: The Last Island.

If you would like to read the whole series in a single volume, the omnibus edition — The Reckoning: The Complete Series — is also available.

"None of us, any more, walks through any door alone.