Dread Nation

Jane McKeene was born just as the dead began rising from Civil War battlefields. The resulting America has built new systems of control around that threat, forcing Black and Indigenous children into combat training to protect others. At Miss Preston's school, Jane learns the weapons and etiquette expected of an Attendant, though her real ambition is to return to Kentucky. When families near Baltimore begin disappearing, she is drawn into a conspiracy that makes her training dangerously relevant. The undead are only one part of what she must survive. This alternate-history horror novel follows a resourceful young woman confronting institutions that present exploitation as opportunity and obedience as the price of safety.