The country of Ice Cream Star - Sandra Newman

My name be Ice Cream Fifteen Star and this be the tale of how I bring the cure to all the Nighted States, save every poory children, short for life. Is how a city die for selfish love, and rise from this same smallness. Be how the new America begin, in wars against all hope - a country with no power in a world that hate its life. So been the faith I sworn, and it ain't evils in no world nor cruelties in no red hell can change the vally heart of Ice Cream Star.

In the ruins of a future America, fifteen-year-old Ice Cream Star and her people survive by scavenging in the detritus of an abandoned civilization. Theirs is a world of children - by the time they reach twenty, each of them will die from a disease they call posies.

When her brother sickens, Ice Cream sets out on the trail of a cure, led by a stranger whose intentions remain unclear. It's a quest that will lead her to love and heartbreak, to captivity and to a nation's throne, and ultimately into a war that threatens to doom everyone she loves.