13 Stars: The birth of a nation

By Cade Sterling

A city is dying. A nation is being born. And between them stands one man who doesn't believe in either.
Zeke Thorne is a Chicago detective who's spent fifteen years watching the system grind people down. He's stopped believing in justice. Stopped believing in hope. Stopped believing in anything except the work. Then the President of the United States goes on television and announces the 13% Solution - a plan to cede thirteen percent of American territory to create Nova Kush, an autonomous Black nation carved out of the Southwest desert. And suddenly everything Zeke thought he knew about the world is wrong. Someone offers Zeke a choice: stay in a dying city, or help build something new. He doesn't trust it. He doesn't believe in it. But he goes anyway.
Because the alternative is nothing.
*13 Stars* is a novel about the birth of a nation - the politics, the betrayals, and the impossible cost of building something worth dying for. It's a thriller about a man who stopped believing in everything and had to decide, one choice at a time, whether he could start again.
- For readers of S.A. Cosby, Colson Whitehead, and Omar El Akkad.

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H7BXXWYJ
• ISBN13: 9798184577326
• Release Date: June 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 330 Pages
• Weight: 0.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.8"