THE LOUDNESS

THE LOUDNESS is a stunning, fast-paced, and punk rock first middle grade novel by debut author Nick Courage. In it, young readers are propelled into another world where the unlikeliest people transform into superheroes.

Henry Long doesn't have a heart. Since the Tragedies, he doesn't have much: just an annoying low-watt buzz from his makeshift transplant, skinny arms, and a dusty library attic from which he charts the slow progress of reconstruction in the Green Zone, the last habitable neighborhood of his troubled coastal city. While his parents work on making the Green Zone independent from a federal government that appears to have abandoned them, Henry himself feels increasingly left on his own--that is, until he discovers a refugee artists' colony called the Other Side. When the federales don't take kindly to the Green Zone's attempts at secession and kidnap Henry's parents, Henry and his new renegade friends are forced from the colorful streets and underground rock clubs of the Other Side to an overcrowded capital city on the verge of collapse. As Henry uncovers more about the conflicting forces that run his corner of the world, he realizes that not everyone is who they seem to be--himself included. His artificial heart may turn out to be more of a blessing than a curse. Nick Courage is a New Orleans-born writer, artist, and musician His work has appeared in Full Stop, The Paris Review Daily, and Exquisite Corpse, where Andrei Codrescu described his poetry as "a fresh sort of daring in the overstrained broth of contemporary American poetry.”