Ship Breaker

Ship Breaker, by Paolo Bacigalupi (2010) is an award winning young adult novel, written from the vantage point of a young teenage boy named Nailer. Nailer and his best friend Prima live in a dystopian future world, where cities have been submerged by “killer storms,” and they have to scavenge oil tankers on the Gulf coast for copper in order to get by. Nailer lives with his abusive, alcoholic, drug addicted father, who is unpredictable and makes returning home a nightmare for him.