Earlier this summer--during the middle of the Gulf oil spill crisis--I came across a review (somewhere) of Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker, a futuristic story set in the Gulf Coast. When the story opens we meet Nailer, the teen protagonist working for a light crew whose job it is to go into old, rusted out tankers and strip their parts. Nailer, being so small, gets into the innards of the old ships and strips the copper wire.
It is a rough, sad world, where everyone on crew is tired and hungry and half-men guard the men running the crew, men who live slightly better lives than the workers. Nailer and his friends see the huge clippers way out in the water rushing to bigger and better places where the "swanks" (the wealthy; i.e., anyone who is not poor like them) live. In essence, Nailer and his friends keep the swanks in their lifestyles.
It is a place where luck and fate are talked about and lived every day. People make sacrifices to the rust gods and other incarnations of "religious" figures that happened over the years.
Nailer becomes one of the lucky, in terms of fate, when he survives falling into an old oil holding tank in one of the ships, even after his coworker, Sloth (who swore a blood oath with him) found him but left him to die. Luck follows him when he and his friend Pima finds a wrecked ship after a city killer (hurricane) that contains a single living passenger: a girl, Nita, whose family controls one of the largest shipping companies in the world at the time.
But, luck does not last for long. Nailer's father and his mean crew finds the trio and knows that Nita is worth money, and he won't hesitate to do anything, even kill his son to get it. Nita and Nailer make their escape, jumping a train to Orleans (a new city built on the edge of the underwater New Orleans) to find one of her family's ships.
I won't divulge any more of the story from there.
While this book has some gaps in terms of plot, it is a fantastic read. I could not put it down and read it every chance I got. What I like most is the many messages it delivers for readers. For example, there is quite a bit about the future of the planet and the environment and characters provide the warning and scolding. At one point, as they are on the train going over the old city of New Orleans Tool (their half-man guard) says, "No one expected Category Six hurricanes. They didn't have city killers then. The climate changed. The weather shifted. They did not anticipate well."
The novel is an examination of social class, too. While they are in Orleans trying to find Nita's people, they can't afford a water taxi and are forced to wade through the filty water using a system of buoys and wooden planks under the water (p. 209).
[Nita asks] "Why don't they just use boats?
"For these people?" Tool looked around at their fellow waders. "They are not worth it."
"Still, someone could make a boardwalk. It wouldn't even cost that much."
"Spending money on the poor is like throwing money into a fire. They'll just consume it and never thank you," Tool said.
Tool himself is an interesting character for discussion. As a half-man (essentially half man half dog), he was created and bred to be loyal to his patron, to the death. But Tool is not and throughout the book we never quite learn why--although this would make a great discussion question for students to explore.
Another issue in the book is the idea of family and loyalty. Nailer's father is loyal only to himself, so friends become family. Throughout the book Nailer and others have to choose between trying to get rich(er) or staying true to themselves. Some are and some aren't. Given the state of our culture, this is too good a theme to not explore.
All of these themes--our planet, conservation, loyalty, fate, greed, family, etc.--are interrelated in this novel. I highly recommend it.
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