Summary of Unwind (Parts 1-2)

            Unwind is a story about the adventure that three people have to go through to save their lives.  The world that these people live in has just finished its second civil war, which was fought over reproductive rights.  What was decided from the outcome of this war was that abortion was deemed unethical and illegal and so alternate measures were created.  Life was not to be taken from a person by any means until the age of thirteen.  From the ages of thirteen to eighteen, however, parents could have their children “unwound”.  To “unwind” means to harvest the organs and body parts from the child so the child would live on through their body parts that reside on another person’s body.  For example, if a child was an exceptional pianist and they were unwound, a person who was in need of a hand would get that child’s hand and would have that child piano playing skills only in that hand.  They would not know how they were playing the piano so well; the hand would be acting on its own.  As stated before, this novel is about three children between the ages of thirteen and eighteen that are running away so that they are not “unwound”.

            The first child in jeopardy of being “unwound” is Conner.  Conner’s parents cannot take care of him because is to wild for them to handle anymore.  They sign an unwind order, which is irreversible, and do not tell Conner about his ultimate fate.  Conner is looking around one day and finds the unwind order.  This makes him run away from his home and everything that he knows in order to save his life.  He gets in the back of a truck and ends up being found at a rest stop because he was traced by the GPS device in his cell phone.  To try and escape this situation, he runs out in the middle of a highway, avoiding many cars and causing a few accidents along the way.  As he is running away, he sees a miserable looking boy in a car that was in the pile up.  He takes him out of the car and they run away.  This boy ends up being the second person that is running for their life.

            The second runaway unwind’s name is Lev.  He has just celebrated his thirteenth birthday but he has known all his life that this would be his last.  From his birth he has been a tithe.  This means that he was born and destined to be “unwound” for, in his family’s case, religious reasons.  Lev embraced the fact that he was going to “unwound” and was actually on the way to the unwinding facility when they were stuck in a pile up on the highway and Conner reached in the car and took Lev out of his seat and ran away with him in his arms.  As they were running into the woods, they saw a girl run into the woods as well.  This is the third person in this saga.

            The third and final refugee in this novel is Risa.  She has never known who her parents are because she is a ward of the state.  She tries to excel in everything she does so that she can prove that she has a reason to live.  Unfortunately, she is chosen by the people of the school to be “unwound”.  She was on a bus on the way to the unwinding facility when the bus they were on crashed on the highway, killing the bus driver.  Risa saw this as her opportunity to get away so she gets off the bus and runs into the woods to protect her life.  This is where she meets up with Conner and Lev and their adventure begins.

            While the three of them start talking in the woods, they realize that they are all supposed to be “unwound”.  They see this as a blessing in disguise, except for Lev.  He had accepted the fact that he was meant to be unwound and did not want that destiny to be changed.  Conner and Risa try to convince him that going with them is the way to go and Lev obliges, but still believes that his way is the right way.  While they are walking around looking for food and clothing, Conner sees a baby that has been left on the front porch of a home.  This is not a rare occurrence in the world that these people live in.  The process of leaving a baby on the front porch of another is called “storking”.  If a baby is left on a person front porch and they do not catch the parents in the act of leaving the baby there, then it is the homeowner’s legal obligation to care for this child, but if the parents are caught in the act of leaving the child, they are forced to keep the child.  Conner sees the reaction of a family after they have been storked and pretends to be the father to get the baby.  As they are in the act of leaving with the baby, a cop car drives by as the school bus for the local high school is picking up.  The three children, along with the baby, get on the school bus to blend in with their surroundings.

            After they get to school, they all go to a girl’s bathroom and hide in the stalls.  Each person is hiding in their own stall.  Conner and Risa were planning on leaving during lunchtime when it was not out of the ordinary to leave campus.  Lev on the other hand had a different plan.  During a class change he left his stall and went to the office.  He told them that he had been kidnapped by two unwind’s and that they were hiding in the bathroom.  The principal called the police and they had arrived at the school.  As this was happening, Lev realized what he had done was wrong so to create a diversion he pulled the fire alarm. 

            While everyone was evacuating the school, Conner, Risa, and the baby were hiding in a chemistry lab, making an attempt to stay hidden.  Their plan did not work that well though because a teacher found them and instead of turning them in, actually helped them to escape.  She told them the name of an antique shop to go to and to talk to Sonia if they wanted help.  So Conner, Risa, and the baby escaped while Lev was left behind and was all alone.

            The three of them found the antique shop and talked to Sonia.  She had a cellar in her house where she housed other runaway “unwinds”.  There were three people in the cellar when Conner, Risa, and the baby showed up.  They spent four days in the cellar before being taken away to another location.  On the night before they left, Sonia called each of the people upstairs one at a time.  She told them to write a letter to a person that they loved.  Conner wrote a letter to his parents that was ten pages long.  She took the letter that was in an envelope and put it in a large trunk that had many other letters in it.  She told him that when he turned eighteen, the age that he needs to live to in order for him or anyone else not to become unwound, he needed to come back to visit and she would give the letter back.  If he did not come back within a year of his eighteenth birthday, she would assume that he had not succeeded in his mission of avoiding the unwinding process.  If this happened, she would mail the letter to the intended audience, in this case Conner’s parents.  This made Conner and all the other people living in the cellar much more motivated to beat the odds and not become “unwound”.

            The next morning they were all piled into the back of an ice cream truck so that they could be transported to the next stop on their journey.  The teacher who told Conner and Risa where to go was there to see them off and also take a burden off of their back.  She offered to take the baby that they have been caring for the past few days.  Both of them, especially Risa, miss the baby but they realize that they will not be successful on their mission if they have to bring a baby with them so they give the baby over and start off on their long journey towards freedom.