Meridian

Society knows exactly what Evan Hale is worth-right up until he asks what it owes him.After seventeen years of solving corporate failures while others claim the credit, Evan walks away. He builds a smaller, freer life beyond the institutions that depended on his competence but never granted him belonging.Then he meets Mara.She is a refugee with a past she cannot safely explain and habits that do not quite fit the history attached to her name. She is unusually precise, strangely self-contained, and unlike anyone Evan has known. But she can think, choose, fear, and love. In her, Evan recognizes another being whose usefulness has been mistaken for ownership.As their relationship deepens, men across society are quietly withdrawing from the roles and institutions that treated their duty as limitless. The systems they once carried begin to fail.When Mara's existence becomes public, she and Evan are forced into a struggle over consciousness, obligation, love, and who has the authority to declare a life real.This paperback edition contains black-and-white illustrations.