The Forbidden Flats

What happens when you can't do the one thing that matters most? Twelve-year-old Hope Toriella lives in White Rock, a town of inventors struggling to recover from the green bombs of World War III. But Hope is terrible at inventing and would much rather sneak off to cliff dive into the Bomb's Breath - the deadly band of compressed air that covers the crater left by the bombs - than fail at yet another invention.

Twelve-year-old Hope has always felt a little different from everyone else who lives in White Rock. She tries hard, but she doesn't always think before she acts. She takes big risks. Sometimes her risks pay off, but sometimes...they fail. Sometimes she fails. Hope knows that the most dangerous thing about living in White Rock is that it's so close to the deadly Bomb's Breath - the invisible, 15-foot-thick band of air that's hovered over the Earth since the Green Bombs of the World War III.