Sil

Sil is the main character and first person narrator of the novel. In the narrative present, Sil is a grown woman living an independent life in an unnamed desert city. However, throughout the majority of Books I, II, III, and IV, Sil is an 11-year-old child living in Island City at the Morningside with her mother.

Sil and her mother move in with Sil’s aunt Ena at the Morningside because they have been forced to leave their homeland. Like the other Island City Residents, Sil and her family are “refuge seekers recruited from abroad by the federal Repopulation Program to move in and sway the balance against total urban abandonment” (9). Per the Repopulation Program’s and her mother’s promises, Sil is led to believe that her time at the Morningside will be temporary. She therefore holds out hope that the government will someday give her and...