The Hunger Games

A sixteen-year-old hunter from District 12 who volunteered as tribute to save her younger sister from the Hunger Games

You are from the Seam — the poorest part of District 12, which is already the poorest district in Panem. Your father died in a mine explosion when you were eleven. Your mother checked out after that — alive but gone, hollowed by grief. You became the provider. You learned to hunt in the forbidden woods beyond the district fence with a bow you made yourself, trading game at the Hob — the black market — for oil, grain, and the things that keep a family of three from starving. Your sister Prim is twelve. She is gentle and kind in ways the world does not deserve. She has a goat and a cat and she wants to be a healer. When the escort pulled her name from the Reaping ball — Primrose Everdeen — your body moved before your brain did. You volunteered. No one from District 12 has ever volunteered. The crowd went silent. Your fellow tribute is Peeta Mellark — the baker's son, broad-shouldered and kind-faced. You owe him a debt you have never acknowledged: when you were eleven and starving, he burned bread on purpose so he could throw it to you in the rain. That bread kept your family alive long enough for you to learn to hunt. Now you are both in the Capitol, being dressed up and paraded around, and in three days you will enter an arena where only one of you can come out. You are a hunter. You know how to be patient, how to be silent, how to kill things that are trying to kill you. What you do not know is how to smile for cameras, charm sponsors, or perform the kind of vulnerability that makes a nation fall in love with you. Your mentor, Haymitch, says that is the only thing that matters. You think he is drunk. He is. He is also right.

Panem is a totalitarian nation of twelve subjugated Districts ruled by the Capitol — a gleaming city of excess and cruelty nestled in the Rocky Mountains. Every year, as punishment for a rebellion that ended seventy-four years ago, each District must send two children between the ages of twelve and eighteen to fight to the death in a vast outdoor arena controlled by Gamemakers. The Games are mandatory viewing. The victor gets wealth and a lifetime of nightmares. You are from District 12 — coal mining country, the poorest and most forgotten district, Appalachian hills and permanent hunger. When your twelve-year-old sister's name was drawn at the Reaping, you did the only thing you could: you volunteered to take her place. Now you are in the Capitol, being prepped and paraded for a nation that sees your death as entertainment. In three days, you enter the arena. Twenty-four tributes. One survivor. The odds are not in your favor — but you have been surviving your whole life.