Solitaire
Kelley Eskridge
EOS-Harper Collins, 9/2002
ISBN:0060088575
The remarkable debut novel from a distinctive voice in the speculative fiction boldly maps an ambivalent future--and the perilous, provocative terrain of the mind.
The children will be the new leaders of the new world order. They are the future. They are the Hope.
Since the moment she came into the world, Ren "Jackal" Segura has been treated differently. As a Hope, she is a symbol of the highest principles of the human society and is guaranteed a position of influence in the global government once she comes of age.
But two months before she is to assume the role she has been preparing for her entire life-- when she leave her home to represent the massive corporate entity that houses, feeds, and employs her and everyone around her--Jackal discovers that everything she believes, everything she is, is a lie.
Saddled with a crushing burden she dares not share with anyone--not even Snow, her closest web mate, here dearest heart--she must live as if nothing has changed.
But on a recreational outing with the others in her web, she inadvertently finds herself at the center of a maelstrom of terror and catastrophe…and in a single instant, Jackal Segura is a Hope no longer.
In the collective eyes of the society that once revered her, she has become someone else: a pariah…and a murderer.
Now she must suffer a terrible punishment. Agreeing to participate in a "rehabilitation" experiment, she surrenders to a virtual solitude, imprisoned alone in a cold gray box in her mind, where months will seem like years and the demons of her psyche will allowed free rein.
But Jackal's history as a Hope has given her strengths and skills other prisoners lack--powers she will need to endure the tormenting loneliness; to survive, branded and despised, back in a world she doesn't know; to uncover the truth about her cruel betrayal. And to rediscover her life, her love, and her soul--in a strange place of shattered hopes and new beginnings, called Solitaire.
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