Now we are getting somewhere

Ok, I think I have found it: Julie Bertagna, Exodus (1st book), Zenith (second book), Aurora (forthcoming, 3rd book) -- premise -- global climate change, an island in (or what is left of) Scotland, a small community that finally recognizes that their island will not survive one more winter of rising seas.  A girl who finds record on the internet of new cities that were created above the water.  So will people follow Mara's recommendation that the islanders set out crowded into boats to find these cities in the sky?  They will (although part of what makes these books so good is that there is lots of questioning about why anyone would pay attention to a 15 year old).  But what awaits them at the city is not what anyone expected.  This postapocalyptic text eventually presents six different postapocalyptic communities -- five different responses to living in a world that is mostly under water.  These communities run the gamut of socio-political arrangements, and differing responses to these radically changing conditions.  Mara creates what is (or will be by the third book) a new community with representatives from most of the others presented.  It is not yet fully clear what shape the new community will take.  But the collection of people include a group who have lived for the last 50 years on islands underneath the far reaching stabiliazation beams of those who live in the sky, abandoned and almost feral children who are beginning to be born with webbed feet, one other survivor of Mara's home island, a boy who lived his life on a collection of lashed together ships and oil riggers, and the virtual memory/interaction of/with a boy who lives in the city in the sky.  There are children, infants and adults.  There is considerable disagreement about what to do and where to go and how to live.  And the conditions under which they live are certainly challenging.  So what the final book should have is a set of principles for how this disparate group can come together and live in such a way that they will not simply begin the next cycle of humans destroying the earth. 

Am now working on the sequel to James Howard Kunstler's World Made by Hand -- which, despite its most excellent title, was truly awful.  The sequel is so far proving to be equally medieval fantasy.  And so far no takers for reading The Years of Rice and Salt together.  (784 pages but you can get a  used copy for only one penny!)