American War is the first novel by the Canadian-Egyptian journalist Omar El Akkad. It is set in the United States in the near future, ravaged by climate change and disease, in which the Second Civil War has broken out over the use of fossil fuels. The plot is told by using historiographic metafiction by the future historian Benjamin Chestnut about his aunt, Sarat Chestnut, a climate refugee who is pushed out of Louisiana by the war. The narrative chapters are interspersed with fictional primary documents collected by the narrator. The novel was generally well received and was nominated for several "first book" awards. Plot In 2074, after the passage of a bill in the United States that bans the use of fossil fuels anywhere in the country, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas secede from the Union, starting the Second American Civil War. South Carolina is quickly incapacitated by a virus, known as "The Slow," which makes its inhabitants lethargic, and Texas is invaded and occupied by Mexico, and the remaining bloc, known as the "Free Southern States" (Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, or "The Mag") continues to fight. The novel is told from the point of view of Sarat (Sara T. Chestnut) and her nephew, Benjamin. Sarat is six years old when the war breaks out. She lives with her family on the coast ravaged by climate change in Louisiana. Her family consists of her parents, Benjamin and Martina; her older brother, Simon; and her fraternal twin sister, Dana Chestnut. After Sarat's father is killed during a terrorist suicide bombing in Baton Rouge in 2075, Sarat and her family relocate to a refugee camp called "Camp Patience", on the Mississippi–Tennessee border. Sarat and her family spend the next six years living a squalid existence at Camp Patience. In 2081, when Sarat is 12 years old, she befriends the charismatic Albert Gaines, a recruiter for the Southern rebels. Gaines introduces her to an agent of the emerging Bouazizi Empire named Joe, who is sending aid to the Free Southern States to keep the United States weak and divided. Later, a Northern militia unit attacks Camp Patience and massacres many of the refugees, which kills Sarat's mother and wounds her brother. Overcome by grief and rage, Sarat later kills one of the top generals of the Northern Union. Following the Camp Patience massacre, Sarat and her siblings are resettled by the