The government has returned.
Freedom is not part of the offer.
Sixteen years after the pandemic, forty-three survivors have made Hanford their home. Then a federal convoy arrives outside the wire, bringing fresh antibiotics, the promise of restored roads, and recognition from a nation rising out of the ruins.
All Hanford must do is register its people and accept the Republic's authority.
But names are marked by skill. Settlements that refuse disappear from the network. And the delegation has come looking for a classified continuity reserve that may still lie beneath Hanford.
Graham Morgan has spent sixteen years protecting his people from hunger, disease, raiders, and war. Now he faces a threat he cannot stop by closing the gate.
As winter traps the delegation outside the wire, altered records surface and military traffic bypasses civilian authority. The Republic is not simply counting Hanford's residents.
It is deciding which of them are useful.
To protect their home, Graham and his people must put their own rules on paper: who belongs, what their leader may command, and what no government may take without their consent.
To survive the Republic, they may have to become one.
The Paper Republic is Book Thirteen in Graham's Resolution by USA Today bestselling author A. R. Shaw-a post-apocalyptic survival thriller about rebuilding civilization and defending the freedom to decide its future.