The heartland war to eradicate abortions started it all; the unwinding, storking, and the harvest camps. The two sides tragically agreed on unwinding as the solution. The process of numbing someone’s whole body while still awake and taking them apart piece by piece without technically killing them.
The book “Unwind” by Neal Shusterman follows three awol (absent without official leave) runaways escaping from their unwinding. It is a thrilling dystopian novel that takes place all across the United States from the side of a highway to a human smuggling plane.
The first and main awol is 16-year-old Connor Lassiter who is also famously known as the “Akron Awol”. During a car pile-up, he meets and “saves” 13-year-old Lev Jedediah Calder who is a tithe that is being unwound for religious sacrifice because he is the 10th child. As Connor flees the scene with Lev over his shoulder he runs into 16-year-old Risa Ward who is a state ward despite her immense intellectual potential, the state still chose to send her to a harvest camp due to “budget cuts”.
When someone turns the age of 13 their parents can send them to a harvest camp to be unwound. Parents have from the age of 13 to 18 to send them to a harvest camp and once someone turns 18, they cannot be sent to be unwound.
The last option for parents to not keep their baby is storking, abandoning a baby on a doorstep and leaving. Once the house owners open the door, they are legally required to raise and take care of the baby. However, if you get caught storking a baby then you are legally stuck with the baby.
The story then follows their journey of twists and turns to a safe haven of runaway unwinds. The elements of survival, justice, courage, and even a little romance all make this book so hard to put down. The story spans five books that are all just as good as the first.
This book is so intriguing and had me hooked on the series. I could not put the book down and when I finished it, I went on to the next book immediately. I read all five books in one month and I usually have a hard time reading books, but this book is like no other. It has a perfect mix of mystery, adventure, and romance.
The book “Unwind” also made the list of the “Top Ten Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers” in 2008 by The American Library Association. I couldn’t agree more that this book belongs on this list. Unwind is such a fascinating story and has a very interesting take on abortions.
Read this book yourself to understand how the unwinding process happens in the “Chop Shop”, from the first step to the last, where life itself fades away into nothing.
