Camp Zero: A Novel

By Michelle Min Sterling

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
A TODAY SHOW READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK

"Thrilling. . . . This remarkable debut delivers its big ideas with suspense, endlessly surprising twists, and abundant heart." —Jessamine Chan, author of The School for Good Mothers

In a near-future northern settlement, a handful of climate change survivors find their fates intertwined in this mesmerizing and transportive novel in the vein of Station Eleven and The Power.

America, 2049: Summer temperatures are intolerably high, the fossil fuel industry has shut down, and humans are implanted with a ‘Flick’ at birth, which allows them to remain perpetually online. The top echelons of society live in Floating Cities off the coast, while people on the mainland struggle to survive. For Rose, working as a hostess in the city’s elite club feels like her best hope for a better future.

When a high-profile client offers Rose a job as an escort at a fledgling company in northern Canada called Camp Zero—a source of fresh, clean air and cool temperatures—in return for a home for her displaced mother and herself, she accepts it. But in the north, all is not as it seems. 

Through skillfully entwined perspectives, including a young professor longing to escape his wealthy family and a group of highly trained women engaged in climate surveillance at a Cold War era research station, the fate of the Camp and its inhabitants comes into stunning relief. Atmospheric, original, and utterly gripping, Camp Zero interrogates the seductive and chilling notion of a utopia; asks who and what will survive as global tensions rise; and imagines how love may sustain us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Apr 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781039005280

Michelle Min Sterling

Michelle Min Sterling is the New York Times bestselling author of Camp Zero, which was also a Today Show #ReadwithJenna Book Club Pick. Michelle was born in British Columbia, Canada, and now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She teaches literature and writing at Berklee College of Music, and has held fellowships at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her writing has appeared in The Baffler and Joyland. Find out more at MichelleMinSterling.com.