Orleans (2013)

After successive storms and disease, the Delta has been cut off by a wall, while people inside continue to organise lives the outside world barely recognises. Fen's effort to protect a newborn makes the consequences of abandonment immediate. Smith's young-adult novel is direct and fast-moving, with an outsider scientist providing a contrasting account of the place. Read it for the politics of writing off a region, and for a local protagonist whose knowledge exceeds the assumptions brought to her.