FRAGILE: A NOVEL. By Alexa Weik von Mossner, Elzwhere Press, 2023.

A man responsible for keeping New York City alive falls for an underground animal activist from the wrong side of the East River in Alexa Weik von Mossner’s debut novel about love, loss, and resilience in the face of global ecological crisis.

New York in 2057—a metropolis divided. Sheltered by enormous seawalls, Manhattan is green, clean, and thriving, but the eastern boroughs have been given up to the rising Atlantic. The planet has been ravaged by climate change, causing a global scarcity of pharmaceuticals, food, and other essentials for survival.

Shavir Tayard, barista and urban community farmer by day, rescuer of animals by night, is on a liberation raid in the coastal evacuation zone of Brooklyn when she sustains an injury that changes her relationship with the cute regular at her coffee shop—and her life.

Jake Alvaro is a troubled Homeland Security agent tasked with securing critical medical drugs for New York in a world running out of everything. His view of whose lives must be saved and who can be sacrificed is challenged when Shavir takes him across the East River to the people he was told to ignore. Soon, he begins to question the fragile truths he built his life upon.

Set in a divided near-future New York, FRAGILE tells a story of commitment and connection against all odds.