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 YA Sci-Fi / Cli-Fi | 85,000 words

WE ARE WANDERERS

by Heather Dean Brewer

Elevator Pitch: A generations-long drought threatens to snuff out the last remaining post-Water War settlement, forcing a small crew of friends and adversaries, led by seventeen-year-old navigator Moselle, to flee the oppressive rule of the Dunekeepers in search of a fabled, water-rich oasis.

Long Pitch: WE ARE WANDERERS is grounded YA SFF that follows climate refugee Moselle as she navigates the Great Deserts—and her friendships, which seem to be shifting as quickly as the sand under her feet—in search of the fabled water-rich oasis Safe Harbor. This project won the Michigan SCBWI mentorship with Patrick Flores-Scott, a YALSA Best Fiction YA winner. 

In the year since their mother died of a common illness, seventeen-year-old Moselle has been charged with taking care of her younger brother Digg—waking before dawn to scavenge the ruins for items to trade for meals, protecting their water from thieves, and keeping Digg away from the Dunekeepers who would eagerly take him as a Water Lily, a child abducted and traded for their water rights. 

Living outside the walls of Comm5 on the desert coast, Moselle and Digg must wait in long lines to receive their day’s water. The decades-long drought that snuffed out the neighboring settlements is threatening to dry out their community too.

Moselle doesn’t plan to stick around just so she and Digg can thirst to death. She plans to find the fabled water-rich oasis that the vanished nomads, called the Wanderers, once talked about. The place called Safe Harbor and the last great lake.

Knowing she’s leaving her friend and lodestar Kode is gut-wrenching. She’d ask him to come but he won’t leave his grandmother and, if he knew her plans, he’d try to stop her. After all, Safe Harbor is a myth, and crossing the Great Deserts, with its blinding derechos and lack of water, can only lead to death. But Moselle would rather face the Great Deserts than thirst to death in Comm5.

As she makes final preparations to leave, her estranged friend Elena approaches with an irresistible proposal: a map to Safe Harbor and the location of a secret water supply in exchange for leading Elena to Safe Harbor. Elena would go alone, but she can’t read the map without Moselle’s help. Stealing water is treason and when they’re discovered, a chase ensues and a wildfire erupts, consuming the surrounding wilderness. Moselle and Elena, and Kode who attempts to help them, become traitors.

Now on the run and unable to return home, Moselle must lead her friends across the Great Deserts with a water cache meant for only two and find the Wanderer’s Safe Harbor before being captured by Dunekeepers or thirsting to death in the deserts.