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Deliver Us
When retiree Luther Prince shoots down an Amazon delivery drone flying over his modest home in east Detroit, he gets slapped with criminal charges, and his granddaughter Piper takes to social media to campaign against the Seattle-based tech-giant, whose deal with the city and the FAA has given them two months to demonstrate the safety of their new drone delivery program. But are they saviors bringing jobs to the blighted city, or imperialists out for their own gain at the expense of Detroit’s mostly black population, a population which is so ravaged by crime, poverty and dysfunctional government—worse than ever in the Trump era—that most can’t perform the new jobs brought in by tech capital?
That's the question DELIVER US swirls around in an absurd and high-stakes marketing battle for the soul of Detroit. One one side, Piper Prince and her guerrilla army composed of an aging graffiti legend, an androgynous local rapper, a white urban farmer, a hipster stand-up comic, and a teenage hacker. On the other, Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and his Detroit team, led by rising star Annika Dahl, Amazon's head of PR for Detroit, and Jamal Dent, a native Detroiter and former Air Force drone pilot returning to his home city at the head of Prime Air.
And in this midst of this chaos, several awkward romances! Black and white, hipster and hood, Seattle and Detroit. Love blooms between arson, robbery, Krav Maga, and hip-hop, it struggles to thrive under a sky filled with ever-growing thickets of drones—drones with packages, drones with pizzas, drones with googly eyes delivering watermelons to church barbecues.
As wild in style as its soul is serious, this charming and challenging novel disentangles our historical inequalities and explores the pitfalls and opportunities of the future.
That's the question DELIVER US swirls around in an absurd and high-stakes marketing battle for the soul of Detroit. One one side, Piper Prince and her guerrilla army composed of an aging graffiti legend, an androgynous local rapper, a white urban farmer, a hipster stand-up comic, and a teenage hacker. On the other, Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and his Detroit team, led by rising star Annika Dahl, Amazon's head of PR for Detroit, and Jamal Dent, a native Detroiter and former Air Force drone pilot returning to his home city at the head of Prime Air.
And in this midst of this chaos, several awkward romances! Black and white, hipster and hood, Seattle and Detroit. Love blooms between arson, robbery, Krav Maga, and hip-hop, it struggles to thrive under a sky filled with ever-growing thickets of drones—drones with packages, drones with pizzas, drones with googly eyes delivering watermelons to church barbecues.
As wild in style as its soul is serious, this charming and challenging novel disentangles our historical inequalities and explores the pitfalls and opportunities of the future.
366 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 15, 2018
4 people are currently reading
54 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 27, 2018
Everyone should read this book soon. It's so timely - set in the future, but not very far in the future, so that things that are happening now seem to be leading up to the events of this book. It feels very prescient in that way, but also in the ways the authors anticipate their readers' reactions. As I read, I felt like the writers were just a few steps ahead of me in every way.
This book is sometimes funny, often troubling, very clever and outside-the-box in its style (sometimes trying a little too hard, but also seemingly aware that I would think that). It's an envelope pusher that made me laugh and check my privilege and ponder the good and bad of Amazon from multiple perspectives. It's quite the book.
This book is sometimes funny, often troubling, very clever and outside-the-box in its style (sometimes trying a little too hard, but also seemingly aware that I would think that). It's an envelope pusher that made me laugh and check my privilege and ponder the good and bad of Amazon from multiple perspectives. It's quite the book.
October 3, 2022
This book was definitely better than I expected. I will say the evolution of the characters the writing and the way it all tied back was pretty clever however the messaging I think misses the mark a bit interesting read nonetheless
November 25, 2022
Detroiter must read
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews