cademeridian writer

The Weight of Petals by Cade Meridian

In a city governed by an invisible digital heartbeat, the most dangerous thing you can do is remember. In a quiet Las Vegas cul-de-sac, four children walk home from school through the golden hour of an ordinary afternoon: Marcus, Leila, Tessa, and Sam. They have known each other since kindergarten. They have never truly been friends. At 3:00 PM, the world is whole. By 4:30 PM, it is gone. When the President activates the Civic Protection Initiative, the surveillance state recalibrates to identify, detain, and deport families who don't fit—targeted by ethnicity, by faith, by the algorithm's quiet judgment of who belongs. By sunset, the parents have vanished into the backs of silent vans. By moonrise, the children are running. The Weight of Petals is a devastating novel about state-sanctioned erasure, the detention and deportation of American families, and the children who prove—through sacrifice after sacrifice—that every choice matters. Especially the ones that cost everything.