The Counterfeit Kin

About this book

In an alternate 1930s America where the Great Depression never ended, the totalitarian Federal Hierarchy assigns every citizen a permanent social 'Station' in iron-backed lineage ledgers, dictating their right to survive. Rowan Vale is a cynical twenty-three-year-old junior ledger clerk in a decaying industrial district, surviving by accepting petty bribes to alter minor records while strictly protecting his exhausted mother and fourteen-year-old brother, Elias. When Elias contracts a fatal black-lung sickness that can only be treated in High-Station hospitals, Rowan's transactional worldview is shattered. To save his brother, Rowan undertakes the impossible: completely forging his family's Station documents to claim a wrongful demotion from years prior. This dangerous multi-stage deception draws the lethal attention of Registry Compliance officers and forces Rowan to forge an uneasy alliance with Irene, a pragmatic neighboring archivist, and the very underground resistance cells he once mocked. Navigating a fractured timeline that reveals the devastating truth behind his father's disappearance in 1929, Rowan must decide whether to merely exploit a broken system for his family's survival, or risk everything to strike a blow against the iron ledgers themselves.

Book details

Genres:

Historical Fiction, Dystopian, Thriller

Language:

en

Published:

2026-06-25

Content rating:

PG