It was morning and the power was not yet on. Zach and Renee lay in the heat of the bed listening to the city wake outside the building's windows. Water rations are down to one gallon per person per day...the mayor is proposing digging a trench to the Pacific Ocean...dried out West Coast cities are crumbling and being abandoned by the east...and in Portland, Oregon, water is declared a communal right but hoarding and riots persist.

Amidst this, a young water activist nicknamed Maid Marian (a.k.a. Renee, 20-something, barista, and eternal part-time college student) becomes a hero. She rides her swelling popularity in opposition to the city government and becomes an icon to a city in need.

Even as Maid Marian and her compatriots build a new community one neighbor at a time, they make powerful enemies in the city government and the National Guard. Their idealistic dream is quickly caught up in a brutal fight for survival.

Sherwood Nation is a postcollapse nonapocalyptic novel! It is the story of the rise and fall of a micronation within a city. It is a love story, a war story, a grand social experiment, a treatise on hacking and remaking government, on freedom and necessity, on individualism and community.