When a radical think tank clones America’s founding fathers, The Boys from Brazil meets the bicentennial in this ingeniously satirical mashup of U.S. history, cloning, and technocracy gone terribly wrong.

The trouble starts when a curious teenager, Benjamin, finds an iPhone in his privy. The problem is, it’s supposed to be 1750.

Ben takes his discovery to his brothers―Thomas, John, and George. The boys have been raised in isolation on an island plantation by a firm but kind woman, Mary Libertas. All four of them chafe at Mary’s restrictions upon them―especially Thomas, who has impregnated yet another servant.

Meanwhile, their de facto father figure, Jeff Hancock, complains to the shadowy Antediluvian Society that it is past the time to explain to the boys where they come from and what they must do: Run America the way it used to be run.

In this more-than-slightly-absurdist novella, Philip K. Dick Award–winning author Meg Elison (Find Layla) skewers those looking to an idyllic past to solve the problems they continue to create.

Bestselling writer Meg Elison is the author of The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, winner of the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award. The sequel, The Book of Etta, was a PKD finalist in 2018. Both books were on the long list for the Otherwise Award. Her third novel, The Book of Flora, was published in 2019. In 2020, she published her first young adult novel, Find Layla, with Skyscape. It was named one of Vanity Fair’s best books of the year. Her first collection, Big Girl, with PM Press, contains the Locus Award-winning novelette, The Pill. Her thriller novel, Number One Fan, was published by MIRA Books in 2022. An essayist and satirist, Elison has published nonfiction in McSweeney’s, Electric Literature, Tor.com, The Wild Hunt, and Psychopomp. Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley.She is married to the cartoonist Colin Lidston, and lives in the Berkshires.