What is the Woodlands about?

Rosa never thought she’d make it to sixteen.

In the Woodlands where everyone must abide the law or is punished harshly, Rosa’s unruly behaviour brands her a leper. No one wants to know her except Joseph, the laid back, ever-grinning opposite she has the idiocy to fall in love with.

A bitter race war has decimated most of the planet, leaving the Russian wilderness as the only scrap of land habitable. Two hundred years later, the Superiors who ruthlessly control the concrete compounds of the Woodlands are obsessed with creating a ‘raceless’ race, convinced this is the only way to avoid another war. Collecting troublemakers for use in their secret, high-tech breeding program, they should have lifted the claw when it passed over Rosa’s head.

When Rosa wakes pregnant, her memory lost in a fog of drugs, her situation seems hopeless. But she doesn’t know Joseph has found her and he’s been planning day and night for her escape.

Joseph and Rosa’s reunion should be joyful but it’s not that simple. Her swollen belly holds the reason: The baby she despises, Joseph wants her to keep.

Any misgivings Rosa has are beaten into the ground with every desperate footstep. They have to run and they have to rely on each other. The Superiors want their property back and Rosa’s only hope is to make it to the Mongolian border before the jagged ice teeth of a Russian winter devours them.