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Sanctuary
Not yet published
Expected 15 Oct 26Thirteen-year-old Miles Jensen walks three thousand miles north through a collapsed world to reach a home he no longer recognizes.
When a solar storm burned out every circuit on Earth, the world stopped in an afternoon: planes down, grids dark, borders hardening. Miles was in Costa Rica with his mother, counting the months until they would go home to Wisconsin. One year, baby. Then we go home, she used to tell him. She did not survive that afternoon.
Eight months after her death, he is the only American boy in an orphanage that is running out of food, where the older children are pushed out through the gate as they age. Then a letter arrives, hand-carried three thousand miles by strangers, addressed to a mother who is already dead. His grandparents are alive on their farm outside Oshkosh, Wisconsin. His sister is alive. Come home. We're waiting.
No planes are flying. No one is coming for him. So Miles begins to walk.
He goes north with a girl chasing an aunt's address in Los Angeles, a boy determined to find the sister he left behind, and a man whose past is written in the scars on his hands. Not all the danger looks the same. Some of it is plain: hunger, checkpoints, bound wrists, men who take what they want. Some of it comes as a contract, a fee, a clerk who is only doing his job. Miles is the only one of them carrying papers that prove he belongs somewhere, and the road teaches him exactly what that is worth.
Sanctuary is a debut novel about migration told in reverse. It is about complicity and the cost of survival: what a document is worth, who is ever asked for one, and how many decent people have to look away for a system to keep running.
For readers of Exit West, American Dirt, and The Road.
When a solar storm burned out every circuit on Earth, the world stopped in an afternoon: planes down, grids dark, borders hardening. Miles was in Costa Rica with his mother, counting the months until they would go home to Wisconsin. One year, baby. Then we go home, she used to tell him. She did not survive that afternoon.
Eight months after her death, he is the only American boy in an orphanage that is running out of food, where the older children are pushed out through the gate as they age. Then a letter arrives, hand-carried three thousand miles by strangers, addressed to a mother who is already dead. His grandparents are alive on their farm outside Oshkosh, Wisconsin. His sister is alive. Come home. We're waiting.
No planes are flying. No one is coming for him. So Miles begins to walk.
He goes north with a girl chasing an aunt's address in Los Angeles, a boy determined to find the sister he left behind, and a man whose past is written in the scars on his hands. Not all the danger looks the same. Some of it is plain: hunger, checkpoints, bound wrists, men who take what they want. Some of it comes as a contract, a fee, a clerk who is only doing his job. Miles is the only one of them carrying papers that prove he belongs somewhere, and the road teaches him exactly what that is worth.
Sanctuary is a debut novel about migration told in reverse. It is about complicity and the cost of survival: what a document is worth, who is ever asked for one, and how many decent people have to look away for a system to keep running.
For readers of Exit West, American Dirt, and The Road.
322 pages, Paperback
Expected publication October 15, 2026
About the author
Daniel Pandiyan
1 book3 followersDaniel Pandiyan immigrated to the United States more than twenty years ago. He is a technologist and an amateur artist whose reading runs to world cultures, religions, philosophy, and art. He lives in Chicago with his family. Sanctuary is his first novel. His artwork and journal can be found at danielpandiyan.com
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Author
Sanctuary by Daniel Pandiyan is a post-apocalyptic survival novel that follows thirteen-year-old Miles Jensen as he attempts to travel from Costa Rica to his grandparents’ home in Wisconsin after a catastrophic solar flare destroys the world’s electronic infrastructure. With his mother dead and food at the orphanage running out, Miles begins the long journey north alongside Lucía and Carlos, two young Nicaraguans searching for uncertain futures of their own. What follows is an exhausting passage through borders, abandoned communities, gang-controlled territories and fragile places of refuge, during which Miles gradually discovers that an American passport may open doors for him that remain firmly closed to the people keeping him alive.
Pandiyan’s most compelling achievement is the way he reverses a familiar migration narrative, placing an American child among those walking north while allowing him to retain the privilege of citizenship even after almost every other form of security has disappeared. Miles begins with a comparatively simple understanding of right and wrong, but hunger steadily strips away the comfort of moral certainty. Lucía brings warmth, intelligence and moral clarity to this increasingly brutal world, while Elias is a particularly absorbing creation, a protector capable of genuine tenderness and terrible violence, carrying both the practical knowledge the children need and a past that makes trusting him perilous. Their evolving relationship gives the novel its emotional centre.
The novel is also impressively alert to the systems that survive catastrophe. Governments may collapse and technology may vanish, yet borders, labour exploitation, institutional prejudice and the language used to make cruelty appear lawful remain disturbingly resilient. The later chapters develop this idea with considerable force, showing how promises of employment, documentation and safety can conceal forms of ownership more effective than chains because every injustice has been authorised by a contract. Pandiyan balances this political anger with memorable images of generosity and cultural endurance.
The journey’s episodic structure does occasionally become repetitive, as refuge repeatedly gives way to violence, captivity and another escape, while certain political ideas are articulated through lengthy conversations after the narrative has already illustrated them very effectively. A little compression in the middle and greater confidence in the reader to recognise the implications of events would have sharpened the momentum and allowed the most harrowing episodes to retain even more of their individual force. The novel also contains graphic violence, sexual exploitation and the endangerment of children, so readers should approach it prepared for material considerably darker than Miles’s age might initially suggest.
Nevertheless, Sanctuary is an ambitious, emotionally confronting and morally serious novel that refuses to confuse reaching one’s country with reaching safety. Its final movement transforms Miles’s personal search for home into a much larger reckoning with the comfort purchased through unseen suffering, ending on an unresolved yet thematically powerful note. Pandiyan leaves us with a deeply uncomfortable question: when an unjust system benefits the people we love, and perhaps benefits us as well, how much are we truly willing to surrender in order to oppose it?
Pandiyan’s most compelling achievement is the way he reverses a familiar migration narrative, placing an American child among those walking north while allowing him to retain the privilege of citizenship even after almost every other form of security has disappeared. Miles begins with a comparatively simple understanding of right and wrong, but hunger steadily strips away the comfort of moral certainty. Lucía brings warmth, intelligence and moral clarity to this increasingly brutal world, while Elias is a particularly absorbing creation, a protector capable of genuine tenderness and terrible violence, carrying both the practical knowledge the children need and a past that makes trusting him perilous. Their evolving relationship gives the novel its emotional centre.
The novel is also impressively alert to the systems that survive catastrophe. Governments may collapse and technology may vanish, yet borders, labour exploitation, institutional prejudice and the language used to make cruelty appear lawful remain disturbingly resilient. The later chapters develop this idea with considerable force, showing how promises of employment, documentation and safety can conceal forms of ownership more effective than chains because every injustice has been authorised by a contract. Pandiyan balances this political anger with memorable images of generosity and cultural endurance.
The journey’s episodic structure does occasionally become repetitive, as refuge repeatedly gives way to violence, captivity and another escape, while certain political ideas are articulated through lengthy conversations after the narrative has already illustrated them very effectively. A little compression in the middle and greater confidence in the reader to recognise the implications of events would have sharpened the momentum and allowed the most harrowing episodes to retain even more of their individual force. The novel also contains graphic violence, sexual exploitation and the endangerment of children, so readers should approach it prepared for material considerably darker than Miles’s age might initially suggest.
Nevertheless, Sanctuary is an ambitious, emotionally confronting and morally serious novel that refuses to confuse reaching one’s country with reaching safety. Its final movement transforms Miles’s personal search for home into a much larger reckoning with the comfort purchased through unseen suffering, ending on an unresolved yet thematically powerful note. Pandiyan leaves us with a deeply uncomfortable question: when an unjust system benefits the people we love, and perhaps benefits us as well, how much are we truly willing to surrender in order to oppose it?
Review of advance copy received from Author
Daniel Pandiyan’s debut novel, Sanctuary, is a bleak survival story set in a world ravaged by an apocalyptic event. In the aftermath of a devastating solar flare that has killed countless people and caused a financial collapse, society is threatening to crumble. 13-year-old Miles, orphaned by the flare, faces a dangerous journey; he must leave his temporary safe haven in Costa Rica and travel to Wisconsin to find his remaining family. As he migrates north, Miles meets fellow travellers along the way, each with their own story – but only Miles holds the precious documents that will get him across the border.
Miles and his group travel across the Costa Rican border, up through Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and onwards towards the United States. Along the way, they face long, gruelling walks, battling ever-present hunger and fatigue. As they cross rivers, climb mountains, and encounter constant danger on the road, the unforgiving landscape pushes the group to their limit. Sleeping in churches and empty houses, forced to beg and steal to survive, the dream of safety and stability up north keeps Miles going. But will America be the sanctuary that Miles desperately needs? And who ultimately decides if he has a place there?
Sanctuary is beautifully crafted, very effectively using vivid descriptions of Miles’s environment to enrich the story. The writing style is short, snappy and poetic; brief, impactful sentences build tension as the story progresses. The descriptive language is immersive, painting bold images of coffee fields in the Costa Rican heat, abandoned streets layered with rust, roads red and dusty with clay, and the vibrant colours of a Guatemalan market. The reader is brought straight into the world of Sanctuary via passages like:
“The road winds through coffee fields, red dirt rutted by carts that no longer run. The air tastes like dust and something green—unripe coffee cherries, bitter on his tongue.”
This story is rooted in genuine accounts from immigrants; this is not a sanitised depiction of the journey north from Latin America. At times the characters are faced with violence, brutality and betrayal. Miles struggles with knowing who to trust, and with the consequences of his own choices in the name of survival. Sanctuary depicts the brutal reality of debt bondage keeping workers trapped, and questions the overwhelming power and authority that a piece of paper can hold. The characters are fleshed out and fully realistic; your heart breaks for these everyday people as they face impossible odds.
At its core, Sanctuary is a story of survival, belonging, and the hopeful belief that – to quote the book – “People are good sometimes.” This book leaves you thinking about it long after you finish reading. It’s a lovingly crafted story, and every aspect of Miles’s journey has been extensively researched. This is set in an uncomfortably realistic future, existing as a sobering reminder – some evils are only made possible when enough ordinary people are complicit.
Miles and his group travel across the Costa Rican border, up through Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and onwards towards the United States. Along the way, they face long, gruelling walks, battling ever-present hunger and fatigue. As they cross rivers, climb mountains, and encounter constant danger on the road, the unforgiving landscape pushes the group to their limit. Sleeping in churches and empty houses, forced to beg and steal to survive, the dream of safety and stability up north keeps Miles going. But will America be the sanctuary that Miles desperately needs? And who ultimately decides if he has a place there?
Sanctuary is beautifully crafted, very effectively using vivid descriptions of Miles’s environment to enrich the story. The writing style is short, snappy and poetic; brief, impactful sentences build tension as the story progresses. The descriptive language is immersive, painting bold images of coffee fields in the Costa Rican heat, abandoned streets layered with rust, roads red and dusty with clay, and the vibrant colours of a Guatemalan market. The reader is brought straight into the world of Sanctuary via passages like:
“The road winds through coffee fields, red dirt rutted by carts that no longer run. The air tastes like dust and something green—unripe coffee cherries, bitter on his tongue.”
This story is rooted in genuine accounts from immigrants; this is not a sanitised depiction of the journey north from Latin America. At times the characters are faced with violence, brutality and betrayal. Miles struggles with knowing who to trust, and with the consequences of his own choices in the name of survival. Sanctuary depicts the brutal reality of debt bondage keeping workers trapped, and questions the overwhelming power and authority that a piece of paper can hold. The characters are fleshed out and fully realistic; your heart breaks for these everyday people as they face impossible odds.
At its core, Sanctuary is a story of survival, belonging, and the hopeful belief that – to quote the book – “People are good sometimes.” This book leaves you thinking about it long after you finish reading. It’s a lovingly crafted story, and every aspect of Miles’s journey has been extensively researched. This is set in an uncomfortably realistic future, existing as a sobering reminder – some evils are only made possible when enough ordinary people are complicit.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Advanced reader copy received in exchange for an honest review, all opinions are my own.
The novel begins with beautiful, vivid descriptions, which make it easy to imagine the world the author has created. As we follow his story, Miles' harrowing journey is difficult to look away from. The writing is fast paced and keeps your attention, the action is interspersed with raw, emotional scenes. The stories of the other characters are woven together seamlessly, creating a bleak, dangerous alternate future. Every character is a part of Miles' journey and shows us what it means to be human, in a world which has lost its humanity.
I really enjoyed this book and couldn't put it down, I was genuinely sad when I finished it as I had become so attached to the characters! It is one of the best modern dystopias I have read and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the genre.
The novel begins with beautiful, vivid descriptions, which make it easy to imagine the world the author has created. As we follow his story, Miles' harrowing journey is difficult to look away from. The writing is fast paced and keeps your attention, the action is interspersed with raw, emotional scenes. The stories of the other characters are woven together seamlessly, creating a bleak, dangerous alternate future. Every character is a part of Miles' journey and shows us what it means to be human, in a world which has lost its humanity.
I really enjoyed this book and couldn't put it down, I was genuinely sad when I finished it as I had become so attached to the characters! It is one of the best modern dystopias I have read and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the genre.
Review of advance copy
Sanctuary was an easy read because I quickly identified with the characters and found them believable. It was a hard read because it faces the possibilities the could well happen in a post apocalyptic world head on without any apology. This book makes think about justice and fairness, right and wrong. True to life, it ends without rainbows and warm fuzzies, leaving me wanting to know more.
Review of advance copy received from Author
This is a harrowing story about survival in a chaotic new world. As this journey unfolds, so does the creeping realization that although everything is supposed to have changed, some things have not. Corruption and careless violence against those who had the misfortune to be born poor or in the wrong country may never truly disappear.
This is also a story of finding family amongst the wreckage and having the courage to continue choosing them even when it seems impossible. This story kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. I applaud the author. Well done.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
This is also a story of finding family amongst the wreckage and having the courage to continue choosing them even when it seems impossible. This story kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. I applaud the author. Well done.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Profoundly touching. Deeply disturbing. A statement of what this world could come to laced with hope for humanity. Highly recommend. I received this as an arc copy. This is my honest opinion.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Received an ARC and was unable to focus on ANYTHING while reading it. I’m not going to summarize the book-that’s done well elsewhere. I will tell you it moved quickly and well. Pandiyan is an excellent writer. Characters come alive and are real- multidimensional. Sadly realistic, but unfolding naturally and I couldn’t get myself to quit; I prefer to read to escape reality. Sanctuary wouldn’t let me escape. Lovely novel.
Review of advance copy
This is a compelling book that is set in a very realistic future. It kept me looking forward to going to bed as I read before I go to sleep. The characters are well fleshed out and relatable. Definitely recommend it.
Review of advance copy received from Author
I really enjoyed this story! It is a really well written post apocalyptic adventure, with a nice selection of characters. I was a little worried it would be too YA for me, but no, it was not. Despite having two main characters as young teens, it has great pacing & some super scary moments as they travel through a savage south America to try to reach family in the US. A really great read & I will for sure look for more by this writer, I do recommend.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews