The Trellis

Debbie Pecks headhunter calls to offer her a new beginning at the Jefferson Trellis the last bastion of American prosperity in Chicagos near future.The salary might relieve her from crushing debt the work might rescue the broken world from itself and the bloodstains draping her new desk . . . those should be mopped up by Monday.As Debbie navigates her new position and Six Counties Police Detective Melody Jackson investigates the murders occurring around the Trellis they each untwine the tendrils of a secret creeping through its corner offices. Like the gardens at the Trelliss base their worlds weave between the lush the stark the delicate and the deadly.Jools Cantors rich prose and intricate storytelling dances between mystery sci-fi and literary fiction layering a decade or two of decline to the American condition. Debbies world is both familiar and fantastic both funny and frightening but to call it a dystopia would damn our own to the same definition.