In 2052, Stevie (Cherokee), a recent high school graduate and aspiring photographer in Texas working at a modern art museum, is looking forward to starting college at UT Austin. Stevie adores her much younger brother Levi (Cherokee/Black), and her two best friends, Loren and Jess. And she appreciates her mom and stepdad, even if they are overprotective. Adam is a new artist intern at the museum especially interested in the museum’s piece Ladder for Booker T. Washington by Martin Puryear. With romantic tension between them building, Stevie is more than a little angry when he bails on attending a special museum event. When Adam finally explains, she doesn’t want to believe his story: He claims he’s come from 200 years in the future to steal The Ladder, part of a humanitarian mission to save meaningful art about human history and experience from the global disaster that’s about to strike—a three-month pandemic, continued climate crisis, and the unraveling of society. Then Levi is diagnosed with a rare cancer—one that will likely kill him if Adam’s story is true. But if Adam’s story is true, can the future save her little brother? This deliciously head-spinning time travel story offers hope in Adam’s assurance that the unraveling of society as Stevie knows it provides the foundation for building a more just and compassionate world.

Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2024 - CCBC Choices 2025

TO: Angel Wilson (LawAngel@IBLO.gov)
FROM: Stevie Henry (shenry@gmail.com)
Thanks for coming to see me; but by the time you read this, it will be too late. No one will have started to panic, yet; but in less than two months nothing will be the same. What came first, The Chicken or the Egg Flu? I wish it mattered. But let's just say, maybe go back to wearing a mask, bathing in sanitizer, and avoid birds and eggs for a bit...

I did not kill my brother. I did quite the opposite, really.

It's the year 2052. Stevie Henry is a Cherokee girl working at a museum in Texas, trying to save up enough money to go to college. The world around her is in a cycle of drought and superstorms, ice and fire ... but people get by. But it's about to get a whole lot worse.

When a mysterious boy shows up at Stevie's museum saying that he's from the future -- and telling her what is to come -- she refuses to believe him. But soon she will have no choice.

From the author of the Walter Award-winning Man Made Monsters comes a YA novel that conjures our futures in startling life - the ones that we are headed towards, and the ones we can still work towards.